Note Cards

1990? The Fox and the Grapes: An Aesop Fable. A Scherenschnitte design cut from a single sheet of paper and painted in water colors by Claudia Hopf. Five cards boxed, with envelopes. Beverly, MA: American Folklore: Kristin Elliott Inc. Gift of Margaret Carlson Lytton, from the Amy Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum in Williamsburg, 1994.

1982? "The Fox & the Crane" by Walter Crane from Baby's Own Aesop (1887). Notecard with envelope from the Rare Book and Special Collections Division, Library of Congress. Three extras.

1980? Arthur Rackham TH greeting card. 5" x 7". La Jolla, CA: Green Tiger Press. Gift of Ann Findley at Meandaur, June, '93. Here is the delightful scene showing not only the tortoise and hare but others who witnessed the bet. There is no message inside the card. The publishing information on the back indicates that the same illustration is available as a postcard. Here the image is pasted onto the front of a simple card.

1971? "No act of Love, however small, is ever wasted. Aesop." K(athy) Davis: Sweet Nothings. Recycled Paper Greetings. Gift of Mary Pat Ryan, July, '86. Here are two pages of a card sent to Mary Pat by a friend. Mary Pat framed it for me. I am unsure of how the two pages fit with each other: most probably the "Aesop" and "Thank you" sides were #1 and #3 of the four-sided card. The saying raises a question for me: from where in "Aesop" did this saying come? I presume LM. Even more I am asking "In which version of Aesop in English" did this saying appear? It would make a fascinating but wide-ranging project to track all the sings which people attribute to "Aesop"! I have found Kathy Davis on the web and her signature, but I have not found this dear ephemeral card!

1992 Note cards: "Calder's Animals." 24 note cards with envelopes. New York Public Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Published by MOMA. Printed in the USA. 4" x 5.25". Unknown source. I rejoiced when I first found these cards. Someone other than I recognized what a lively artist Calder is, particularly in his depiction of fables. The less happy thought here is that several of the images selected here present not fables but animals. The subjects are: "Camel"; "Lion and Gnat"; "Horse and Lion"; Dog, Sheep, and Wolf"; "A Stag Drinking"; and OF. Of the original 24 cards, we still have 16, with each of the six types represented. I offer here what seem to me the best two cards. Compare these cards with the yellow Calder cards also in our collection.

1985? "Calder Animals." Six different scenes done by Alexander Calder. Boxed, with envelopes. New York Public Library and Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art. The date of the original drawings is 1931.

1992? Four fables and illustrations from The Fables of Aesop and Others: Translated into Human Nature (c.1860), with hand-colored illustrations by Charles H. Bennett. Boxed set of three each, with envelopes. Berkeley: Peaceable Kingdom Press. $12.95 from the Pierpont Morgan Library, Aug., '95. For a larger reproduction of any card, click on it.

1997 "The Fables of Aesop." Eight cards by World's Greatest Minds Ltd, England. Each card has a window opening on a reproduction of a classic fable illustration. The outside of the card, around the window, presents the text of the fable. The inside presents the application. Stories and applications are taken, in slightly edited form, from Croxall. Gift of Maureen Hester from the Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, August, '97. Several extra copies. Click on any card to see a larger image.

2000? "Aesop's Fables Walter Crane." Twelve note cards, three each of four designs taken from Walter Crane's Baby's Own Aesop of 1887. About 4¾" square. ©Bodleian Library, University of Oxford. Printed in U.S.A. Rohnert Park, CA: Pomegranate Communications, Inc. Gift of Roy and Pat Hanson, Sept., '01. Two extra sets. Good color reproduction work. Even the box, with "Juno and the Peacock" has luscious color. The other three designs represented are FK, WS, and "Brother and Sister." Internally the cards are blank. The back of each card has the FK image of the stork with the source information, including a couple of bar-codes. What gives the Bodleian copyrights for Walter Crane's art?