1960? Cards of Iminacre buttons using La Fontaine fable designs. About 2" x 3⅛". Four to six buttons per card.
The surprise with these button cards is that the fable illustration – clearly taken from one of La Fontaine's most beloved fables in each case – has nothing perceptible to do with the buttons! The fable is never named. The verso provides either the lot number, always beginning with "975-22" but then varying for two further digits, or these lot numbers plus a short promotion of the buttons in French and English. While cataloguing these seven cards received from Moriceau Esméralda, I found others at two different places on the web and of course several already purchased by other collectors! The hunt will continue.
1935? Thirty stapled handbills of La Fontaine’s fables printed by Imageries Réunies de Jarville-Nancy. Heavy paper featuring a framed text on the left half and an image on the right half. Each verso is plain except for a stamped advertisement for Roger Schilling, Coiffeur, in Tours. €40 from Librairie Traits et Caractères, Sens, France, through ABEbooks, April, ’21.
Several things are unusual about this collection. It is understandable that the vendor labelled it as “Imagerie d’Epinal,” since it is definitely in that category; I believe that it may be a competitor to Epinal. The most unusual feature is the stapling together of these thirty handbills. I had been tempted to catalogue it as a book. Lastly, I find the diversity of style and quality surprising. GA reminds me of Paul Colin, who was already famous in 1925. Typical and typically colorful is FS. Surprisingly creative in its composition is DW. Perhaps not as well executed is “The Kite and the Nightingale” – though a quick check finds this very illustration on a trade card posted for the fable as presented on a prominent La Fontaine website! Perhaps also not as skillfully done, though wonderfully conceived, is “The Monkey and the Cat.” These handbills have lasted well these 85 years! Heavy stock. The images seem to be identical with the fifteen that appear in the pamphlet by the same publisher “Fables de La Fontaine, Album No. 2,” for which I have guessed the same date. The vendor dates these about 1905.
Maltese version of The Story of the Hare and the Tortoise and other tales. Test ta' Annamarija Ciarlo? (Original by Peter Holeinone, NA?) Purchased in a set with a hardbound book by the same title. Heart Productions, in conjunction with Klabb Kotba Maltin.
1965/1967 Il gioco delle favole (The Fable Game) by Enzo Mari. Seconda variante. Milan: Danese. Two exemplars, gifts of Kathryn Thomas and Mary Pat Ryan.
Twelve interlocking cards often with traditional combinations of characters on the same card (FC, OF, TH, WL). Obverse and verso of each card are mirror-symmetrical.
1965/1985 Il gioco delle favole (The Fable Game) by Enzo Mari. Quarta variante. Milan: Danese. $15 at Games People Play, Cambridge, MA, June, '91.
Six larger (slightly over 6" x 12") cards with all the figures from the second variant, now done with lively color. The cards again have traditional characters together, like the fox paired with both the crow and the stork on the sample card here.
1965/2007 Il gioco delle favole (The Fable Game) by Enzo Mari. Mantua: Corraini. $37.50 at Unicahome, Las Vegas, NE, March, '08. Second copy for $40 from Megan Gillette, Urbana, IL, through Etsy, Dec., '20.
This latest edition seems identical with the Fourth Variant from 1985. Corraini did their first edition in 2004. This is their third impression from 2007. My, the price has gone up! And it keeps going up!
