Vintage Advertising

1920's.

1930's

1950's

Just for fun, check out these old Cigarette Advertisements... with the Doctors smoking! These range from the 1920's , 30's (these are the first 2 images and are illustrated). The late 40's-early 1950's have photography in them.

Sorry for the blur today!

'F'

F from early Greek times until about 200BC this sign looked something like a backward "F." and had the wound of a modern "W." The Latins gave it the form and phonetic value that we use today. (Rose Folsum)

Hopper's Ledgers

A sketch from my favorite Hopper painting - above.

"What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house."

- Edward Hopper

Here's a small glimpse of Edward Hopper's sketchbook. So fascinating! He planned the colors, even sometimes the brand of paint. Sometimes he drew from newspaper photographs. He seemed to be quite a planner of his paintings... not terribly spontaneous... rather calculated.

Hopper also wrote about to whom a painting was sold, the check number, and the breakdown of the gallery percentage of the sale. (this info was usually penciled in at the end of an entry.) Sometimes he wrote who had come to see certain paintings. Fascinating to see his own personal handwriting and dealings.

From the book, Edward Hopper: A Journal of His Work. By Deborah Lyons. Whitney Museum of American Art, NY and W.W. Norton & Co. NY. 1997.

PS click on image if you want to read his entries! Fun stuff!!

Red Canna

Red Canna, 1920. Georgia O'Keeffe. Watercolor on paper, 19 x 13". Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven CT.

"When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to see a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not." - Georgia O'Keeffe.

Glassmaking at Jamestown

Captain John Smith

Some examples of vessels they made.

These are drawings from a historical book, The Tryal of Glasse - The Story of Glassmaking at Jamestown about the Virginia Colonists during the presidency of Captain John Smith.

Glassmaking in America began at Jamestown, Virginia in 1608, where a glass factory was operating in the nearby forest just a little more than a year after the first colonists arrived from England. The 'tryal of glass' sent back to England that year was the first glass make by Englishmen in the New World, and the manufacture of glass, therefore, can justly lay claim to being the first factory industry in England's American colonies. (J.C. Harrington)

Aquatint

Georges Rouault, French. Born 1871. Grimacing Man from Flowers of Evil. Aquatint.
The top narrow rectangle is an enlarged cross-section showing particles of resin on a plate surface.

1. Stopped out* before biting
2. One-minute bite - then stopped out.
3. 4 minute bite- then stopped out.
4. 16 minute bite, then stopped out.

Intaglio process. A tonal medium which permits 'grainlike' values in the print ranging from silvery grey to intense black. A porous ground of resin or other substances in applied to the plate, heated, then etched a number of times to produce the required values. (Jules Heller)

* Stopping out: Preventing certain lines or areas of a plate from biting, by brushing on an acid-proof material.

Sabra Field

Fields and Mountains

Dandelion Galaxies

Windows of Light on the Snow

Deer in the Orchard

"The pastoral image... is a model for man to shape his environment with care, to make the natural world more beautiful, more whole. ...The pastoral image poses an answer to the question, 'How are we to live with our planet?' " - Sabra Field

Her prints hang in imposing corporate boardrooms and in rustic New England fishing camps. Her 1991 Vermont Bicentennial commemorative stamp depicting yellow farm fields, a red barn and blue mountains quickly became of the the USPS's best selling issues, with more than 60 million copies purchased. Sabra Field is that rare contemporary artist whose work has found a large falling well outside the traditional realm of collectors and art experts. At her home and studio set in the Vermont countryside, she meticulously carves and hand-inks the wood blocks with which she creates her magical prints, one color at a time. (Tom Slayton)

** From the book, Sabra Field - The Art of Place. by Tom Slayton. University press of New England.