1988? Aesop's Fables. Eight cards of black-and-white illustrations reproduced by the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. Gift of Kathryn Thomas, Spring, '88.
The eight include "Zeus and the Snake" (Venice, 1644), FC (Venice, 1644), FG (London, 1828), "The Woodcutter and Hermes" (Lille, 1809), SW (London, 1828), TH (London, 1828), DLS (Venice, 1819), and "The Stag and the Lion" (London, 1828). With illustrations ranging over almost 200 years and four editions, this little collection gives a nice suggestion of the illustrated fable books you might find in a good classics library.
2018 "Frog and Scorpion." Silhouette art print by GeekyGamerGirls on Etsy. 17" x 11". $21 from GeekyGamerGirls on Etsy, August, '18.
"A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog hesitates, afraid that the scorpion might sting it, but the scorpion promises not to, pointing out that it would drown if it killed the frog in the middle of the river. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. Midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog anyway, dooming them both. The dying frog asks the scorpion why it stung despite knowing the consequence, to which the scorpion replies: "I am sorry, but I couldn't resist the urge. It's in my nature." Wikipedia, which offers this version, says that the fable is not known in this version until the 20th century.
1993 Three cards in a series of Jean de la Fontaine's fables. "Les Deux Mulets," FS, and "Le Singe et le Dauphin." Conseil Général de l'Aisne: Bibliothèque Départementale de Prêt: Association des Amis de la Bibliothèque Départementale de Prêt. All three are marked "Gedge 93." €3 apiece from Gérard Crucy at the Paris Post Card Exhibit, Jan., '05.
These illustrations--lively, colorful, and contemporary--are taken from the Exposition "Quand la Fontaine rime avec le rock." "Les Deux Mulets" is postmarked in 1996, while the other two are postmarked two years later. The former card shows one mule driving a tractor in front of another mule dapperly clad as a chauffeur in a large vehicle. FS has a sporty stork sitting across from a primitive fox with sunglasses on his forehead. The fish-laden beakers are transparent. The monkey in "Le Singe et le Dauphin" looks like a jockey, and the dolphin looks as though he is having a great time! I would love to see more of Gedge's work in this style. The only reference I could find on the web speaks of the exhibit this way: "Les saveurs de La Fontaine remises au goût du jour, mijotées sur les fourneaux de l' illustrateur Gedge et assaisonnées avec quelques épices de Rock and Roll."
1880? Two fables of Florian. Broadside. "L'Enfant et le Miroir" and "L'Avare et son Fils." 15” x 12.5.” Metz: Gangel. €20 from chcestampnet through Ebay, Jan., '22.
Lively reds and blues render these two fables. The second is among Florian's wittiest: the miser father deserves his smarter talkback son! What will this son become when he becomes the miser?! Because people tend not to know the plots, I will summarize them briefly here. In "The Child and the Looking-Glass," a child first smiles and then grimaces at a mirror, and gets angered by the grimaces he sees. His mother catches him in his rage. "If you smile, it will smile back. Whatever you do, the image will do the same to you." In the second fable, a miser buys apples and locks them away but likes to look at them. Alas, some rot, and those he eats. His famished son gets the key and eats a lot of them with two little friends. "Give them back!" his father demands when he finds them out. Son: "Don't worry, Dad. We're all decent fellows. We leave the bad apples for you to eat; we ate only the healthy ones."
1977 “Gamzat Tsadas: Fables (Russian).” Complete set of seventeen colored cards featuring the fables of Gamzat Tsadas. Artist: C. Asheroorov Ekhepov. 4¼” x 8¾”. $20.17 from RareSoviet on Etsy, Dec., ’20.
“The first national poet of Dagestan.” Islam, the Revolution, creativity. Wrote poems, fairy tales, and fables for children. I can recognize perhaps five of the fables pictured here. I put them first here. The card size is unusual, with title, colored image, and a few lines on the front and a full text in Russian on the verso. Soon enough, we may be able to use OCR technology to make more sense of the texts. Till then, I have to be happy to enjoy the pictures and wonder about the story!
To my surprise, I have found two sets of "guessing game" cards, one multicolored French cards and the other duochrome Dutch cards. The missing figure may not always to be easy to find in these cards! Click on either the picture here or the link below to go to either set.
1975 Galleys of “The Fables of Aesop, Selected and Illustrated by David Levine.” Translated by Patrick and Justina Gregory. Boston: Gambit.
Our first galleys! From one of my earliest and most favorite fable books! The set is complete, 8 numbered signatures, each with a progressive mark of its place in the text and all with the number “2082. Notice these markings in the photo below. Each signature has 4 large pages folded in half to produce 16 pages 7” x 9.7”.
1931 Aesop's Fables. Gallaher Ltd. So called "Series of 50." $9.95 from "Warlock" through Ebay, Nov., '01.
Having heard that there was a so-called "Series of 50" that had only 25 cards in it, I was on the alert for it and at last found it. The design is exactly the same as in the series of 25 done by Gallaher, apparently in the same year. Had they planned to go further but never perhaps got around to it? A number of cards in this particular set are misprinted on the verso, so that they show a part of a column from a different card and miss part of this card's column. Might these be contemporary reproductions?
1931 Aesop's Fables. Gallaher Ltd. Series of 25. $40 from John Wyatt, Wynn Vale, South Australia, through Ebay, March, '99.
This set is exactly identical with the later Anstie set of 25, except that the back here is printed with brown ink rather than black and has "Issued by Gallaher Ltd." underneath an individual card number at the bottom of each back. John did some investigation to learn that Gallaher later in 1931 issued the same cards with "Series of 50" on the backs, but the series included only these original 25! After a good deal of time spent scanning these cards, I can say that they are unusually well cut and aligned.
Gallaher Ltd., of Belfast and London, published three sets of fable cards, the first in three forms. This first set, called "Fables and Their Morals," was a series of 100 cards. The set, called "Aesop's Fables," was a set of 25. The third is identical with the second, but was labeled a series of 50. Click on a button to see any of the sets.
1950? Fourteen advertising cards by R. Gabutti in an envelope. All have advertising on the verso; about half also have advertising as part of the image.
I find the artistry of these advertisements spectacular! Getting them has already set me on a quest to get the others in the set of 19 listed on the flyleaves of the envelope. There is plenty of humor in these illustrations! The advertisements seem to be for various products of Laboratoires M. De Rive in Paris. One of the two TH advertisements for Strongénol – the one with brown foreground rather than green -- was actually sent as a postcard, unfortunately without a clear date stamp. The Gabutti signature is different in these two cards. The products are sometimes worked cleverly into the fable scene, as when the crane doctor brings a tube of ointment to wounded wolf. The crow is similarly dropping not a cheese to a flatterer but medicine to a sick fox with his head bandaged up. Now the full set has arrived, found on French Ebay at the time I was cataloguing the original set here. These six new cards have their own treats. The old man is trying to reveal to his sons not the glory of a well-worked family inherited plot of land but rather the glory of cash! The country mouse is recommending Voxynox to his city slicker cousin. There is lots of fun to be had here!
1900? "La Cigale et la Fourmi." Complete five card numbered postcard set. From various publishers. $35 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne-Ricouart, France, Sept., '20.
This set is unusual first of all for the creativity of its sender, who wrote in various places on the five cards. All were sent with Swiss stamps to the same person in Locle, Switzerland. The set is also peculiar in that Card #3, which uses different typeface for its text, advertises "Phot. Werder, La Louviere; Ed. Nels" in Brussels. Cards #1 and 4 have "E.N. Serie 19" Numbers 12 and 15, respectively. Might the "E.N." be Ed. Nels? Cards #2 and 5 have "J. Farine, Editeur, Le Locle" with numbers 1072 and 1075. These five were already a series when the sender acquired and sent them.
