1997 Figures of walking tortoise (#7) and sleeping hare (#13) with runners' numbers. The former is 2½" long, while the latter is 3" long. $5 each from Fredda Ecker of Rainbow Miniatures at NY flea market, April, '97.
On a Sunday in Chelsea, I wondered if I might find something. Here is my find!
2020 FG tie created by Custom Cravatieur, gift of Anna Sniezek. Nov., '20.
This wonderfully thoughtful gift comes from a student whom I had taught twice. I also served as "talent" in a major psychology project. A little research found the makers on Etsy. I would not be surprised if this was truly a "custom cravat." What a wonderful gift!
2000 FG Refrigerator Magnet. Classical Creations. Made in USA. 2” x 3”. Source unknown.
It is so tempting to browse to see whose traditional presentation is “borrowed” here! The presentation is indeed classical in the surroundings it gives to the scene.
1926 One postcard featuring FG with that title, and "Les Fables de Jean de La Fontaine" on its front. Etablissements Artistiques Parisiens. Illustration signed by T(?) Mayboy. €6 from Akpool, March '23.
The card is filled in and dated in 1928, though it seems not to have been stamped or cancelled. The scene of the illustration is hard for me to construe. Is the little girl looking up to grapes that she cannot get, even though she has used a kneeler and half-chair? Is she looking at a home that she cannot aspire to? The home does not seem that extravagant. I have been happy to find others with "Mayboy" signatures on work from the 1920's.
2010? FG Necktie. 100% silk. Hand made. Venezia. Italy style. Made in China. Unknown source.
The repetition here is absolute in rather rigid rows. Fox and grapes alternate and then are in the next row in checkerboard alternation. As with other ties, I wonder if there really was an effort to have the viewer take in the specific object presented on the tie. The effect is rather "a red tie with some white markings." In fact, are those grapes or rather leaves?
1995? FG handkerchief advertising Bonux. Jean Effel. 8.5” square. Source unknown.
Apparently Bonux was Procter & Gamble's low cost laundry detergent. The web helped me to learn both that this is indeed a handkerchief and that it belongs to a series advertising Bonux, at least one of which is online for a price that astounds me!
1985? FG Flip-Book. Student creative work for a fable course. 4.2” x 3.7”. Two staples. Unknown creator.
I regularly assigned one creative work when I taught literature, whatever form that creative work might take. Here’s a delightful flip book of the fox approaching the grapes, trying to get them, and walking away. Cleverly done!
1901 FG by Grün. "Fables de La Fontaine." Cover, Le Sourire, July 6, 1901. €10 at Clignancourt, July, '17
Is the joke here that the man has consumed sour grapes and is now vomiting? And the woman seems to be enjoying it? Help!
1980 12 different fables illustrated by fèves. From various vendors online and at French flea markets, through August, '15.
These "beans" combine two characters in one scene, often with simple and even garish coloring. Simple forms. Are these members of more than one set?
1980 8 different fables illustrated by fèves. From various vendors online and at French flea markets, through August, '15. One duplicate of TMCM as a cadeau offered with other fèves.
As can happen with such small sculptures, the results are sometimes a little bizarre. The milkmaid is pictured quite differently, for example, from other illustrations of this fable. WL seems to miss the fable quite entirely. WC, by contrast, seems quite successful! Some further investigation reveals that these are eight of the ten feves listed as "Complete Series of 10 Fables Feves" but without FG and LM. These are differently colored: that is where some of the "bizarre" comes into play.
2011 Complete set of nine "Au Fournil" feves. €12.50 from ptijacky through Ebay, Feb., '24. Extras of Lamb and Stork Fèves from "La Fontaine au Fournil." €1.40 each from Un monde de collection through Ebay, Dec., '23.
"Fournil" means bakehouse, and each of these characters is doing something in the process of baking and distributing baked goods. I have seen a cigale in the same format on Fabolie's identified as a feve Bourseau. Cute figurines! Are the nine a complete set?
2011 Royal Ceram Les Fables de La Fontaine Fèves Ceramique. Complete set. Between $3.51 and $4.10 for each of the twelve pieces from Genealogos on Ebay, July, '20.
This is a totally surprising set of miniature tiles. "Feves" in French are "fava beans," hidden in king cakes. I am surprised by the number of forms they have taken on. For fables, at least two forms are important: little figurines of well known fable characters and, in this case, miniature tiles of well known illustrations of La Fontaine's fables. These illustrations are in fact taken from Pellerin of Epinal, a long-time publisher in brilliant color of La Fontaine's fables. I was surprised to find this set for sale on Ebay, because I had not been aware of its existence. I am delighted with it! It is hard to know where to list it. I will list it exhaustively under "Tiles" but offer links to it in "feves" and "toys." Fables keep surprising me! I will offer here two overall views and then individual tiles.
960 "Le Lievre et la Tortue." Ville de Château-Thierry. Imp. Du Centre. Comité des Fêtes de Château-Thierry. About 4" x 6". €4 from Jacky Mabilat, Boutigny sur Essonne, Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05.
This is an active and colorful oversized postcard. Under the dynamic cartoon of TH is a map of a route from Dormans through Château-Thierry to la Ferté S/Jouarre. At the upper left is the seal, I presume, of the Ville de Château-Thierry. The verso is simple and clean.
1980 One postcard 4" x 6" advertising "XXIes Fetes Jean de La Fontaine" at Chateau-Thierry, 23 June 1980. Unknown source.
The cancellation reads "Run like the rabbits at the 21st Festival Jean de La Fontaine," and the card itself shows rabbits running across the countryside – perhaps toward Chateau-Thierry? The artist of the card's monochrome illustration is J. Verdier. 500 copies of the postcard seem to have been produced.
1903 Complete set of seven photographic postcards presenting Jean de La Fontaine's "Le Renard et le Buste." Femina. $70 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
The human representation of this fable shows a fascinating way of taking the story. As I walk through these photographic human representations of animal stories, I have the sense that the "director" and the audience both know their animal fables so well that the director is at pains to find something new and creative in the human representation. La Fontaine tells us that most people in high places are no more than theater masks that impress asses. The fox by contrast examines them slowly and from various directions and is led to say what he once said about the hollow bust of a hero: "Nice head but no brains!" The human story here has a gentleman (the ass perhaps?) admiring a bust, while a cleaning woman with feather-duster in hand (the fox, no doubt) examines the bust more closely, tips and turns it, and – apparently -- finishes unsatisfied with what she finds. What does this woman hold in her right hand in Card 6? In La Fontaine's fable, a fox seeing a bust remembers the earlier experience (the experience portrayed in earlier traditional Aesopic fables) of encountering an empty mask, which led the fox back then to say something like "Nice face but no brains!"
1904? 5 card photographic series by "Femina" presenting FG through two human adults. All five signed and dated in April, 1904. $5 for each card from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '20.
Do I read this series wrong by understanding it to portray a romantic relationship that does not turn out as the initiator desires – and so he rejects it? Notice that the sender dates his five cards in April on the 5th, 16th (twice), and 25th (twice). Was he trying to suggest something to Mademoiselle M.L. Pouchan in Pau? Did she come down from her ladder? "Femina" has a distinctive cursive signature, clear on each of these cards, for its publications in the early 20th century, apparently between 1901 and 1910. It fascinates me to figure out what a feminist publishing house is communicating by presenting this fable with this interpretation!
1998 Félix Lorioux Plates. Two from a set of 72 reproductions, 8.5" x 11" each: "Le Rat de Ville et le Rat des Champs" title page and guitar-playing grasshopper from GA. Reproduced from Lorioux' Fables de La Fontaine (Hachette, 1921). Free samples from the whole set sent by Justin M. Jacobs, Jr., President of Fantasy Artworks, Palo Alto, CA.
I was confused, since the accompanying letter calls these (as they were advertised) "bookplate replicas." "Bookplate" here apparently means a plate in a book, not a personal identifier. I am sorry that I cannot invest $432 in reproductions from a book that cost me $50 for a first edition! But I am amazed at what people turn out! GA is matt, while TMCM has glossy paper. Apparently Fantasy Artworks means to prepare these as art to be matted and framed.
2020? Twelve colored postcards of fables by Felix Lorioux. Part of a set of 24 Lorioux postcards. CC-1162. Pixiluv, com.$6.99 from Pixiluv, com., Dec., ’20.
Exceptionally good execution of detail on these twelve scenes from Lorioux and his presentation of fables, including Mother Goose starting the series by reading for the other animals from a book of La Fontaine’s fables and, at the end, walking away with the book under her arm.
1980? Feedsack cloth picturing CP. 32" x 10¾". $22.50 from elianabelle920 through Ebay, Nov., '22.
This is a lovely long stretch of blue cloth. I wonder if finding it sets me off a new search for fable feedsack cloths! Who would have thought it!
1928? February, 1929 calendar with a maxim from Aesop and a Milo Winter illustration. Advertisement for Wilkens-Anderson Company, Chicago, IL. 4¾" x 10". St. Paul, MN, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario: Brown & Bigelow. $7 from Sandyscottage through Ebay, Jan., '25.
I am particularly happy to add this calendar to the collection since it repeats one already in the collection as February for the year before! The conclusion seems to be that Brown & Bigelow had designs ready to go that were not tied to a specific year. Fascinating! As is true generally for the Brown & Bigelow series, it is not clear, to me at least, which fable is presented or alluded to here.
1961 FDC Monaco 48411: Envelope featuring a "Respect for Life" stamp and a cartoon of the grasshopper and ant in black, blue, and red. $3 from Topical Covers, Netherlands, through Ebay, Nov., '20.
Once again, the artist has fun with the well known fable. The cicada is a dancing singing guitar playing artist, while the ant runs a grain shop and is busy at work sweeping. Well done!
I also learned that there is a "Postal Service Bulletin" presenting this series of stamps. It was offered together with an FDC envelope of the three stamps by csts-trade on eBay, July, '18. It puts the parable teller underneath a tree with a book and offers both versions of each stamp.
