Item

V. Spahn

Title: V. Spahn
Description: 1950? Fables of La Fontaine. Twenty-three (out of a series apparently of twenty-four) full-color postcards displaying favorite La Fontaine fables, with young people playing appropriate human roles. V. Spahn signs the cards. Card #17 is missing. €62 for the set from Serge Ferry at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05. Extra copy of #12 from Suzanne Botti, Le Bono, at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05. Extra copy of FK for $9.99 from Gold-Coast, Brentwood, TN, Nov., '13. Extra copies of #7 and #15 for €1 apiece from Akpool, Berlin, August, '18. TH for €4 from collecman through Ebay, June, '22.

The text of the fable takes up most of the message-space on the verso of the cards. Under the picture is "Fables de la Fontaine" in Italics at he lower left and a block-print title at the lower right. The modes of translating the fables into children's life are fascinating here. The emphasis is not on simple "cuteness." The children can play the fable straight, as in "L'Huitre et les Plaideurs" and GGE. FC is thus about one child stealing a ball while another sits up a tree and watches his ball stolen. Or a child can assume an unpleasantly animalistic role, as when TMCM shows an imperious girl chasing two boys away from a table full of food. The picture opens up whole new categories of interpretation when "The Wolf Become a Shepherd" shows a child picking up play sheep on the lawn. Again, there are whole new interpretations at work when FK shows a girl in a bathing suit with a frog clinging to her shoulder. Is she queen of the frogs? A few cards perhaps hardly make sense. What does the boy falling into the water have to do with OR? The set hits a low point, I believe, when it offers a black male child wearing feathers as "Le Geai Paré des Plumes du Paon." Perhaps the cards are meant simply as fun and not to be interpreted at all. Card #15 adds a false number to its fable title: "XIV." All the cards here seem to have been sent or addressed to the same party--but never to have been mailed with a stamp. Finally getting #17, TH, in June of 2022 completes the set.
Date: 1950?
Source: €62 for the set from Serge Ferry at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05. Extra copy of #12 from Suzanne Botti, Le Bono, at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05. Extra copy of FK for $9.99 from Gold-Coast, Brentwood, TN, Nov., '13. Extra copies of #7 and #15 for €1 apiece from Akpool, Berlin, August, '18. TH for €4 from collecman through Ebay, June, '22.
Subject: Cards See all items with this value; Postcards See all items with this value; Postcard Series
See all items with this value; V. Spahn
See all items with this value; The Lark and Her Young See all items with this value; The Two Roosters See all items with this value; The Crow Who Borrowed Feathers See all items with this value; The Two Pots See all items with this value; The Coach and the Fly See all items with this value; The Little Fish and the Fisherman See all items with this value; The Milkmaid and the Pot of Milk See all items with this value; The Fox and the Crow See all items with this value; The Grasshopper and the Ant See all items with this value; The Cobbler and the Financier See all items with this value; The Old Woman and the Two Servant Girls See all items with this value; The Goose with the Golden Eggs See all items with this value; The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse See all items with this value; The Miller, His Son, and Their Ass See all items with this value; The Oak and the Reed See all items with this value; The Frogs Wanting a King See all items with this value; The Tortoise and the Hare See all items with this value; The Wolf Become a Shepherd See all items with this value; The Travelers and the Bear See all items with this value; The Ox and the Frog See all items with this value; The Two Doves See all items with this value; The Child and the Mirror See all items with this value; The Oyster and the Litigants See all items with this value; The Worker and His Children See all items with this value

Item sets: Carlson Fable Collection