Finished!

The Oz window is finished and in place. We managed to complete it in the time we had allotted for the project, which is always a good thing!








On the right, I'm foiling the pieces (wrapping with thin copper tape), in preparation for soldering. On the left, Irwin is finishing some soldering on the back of the window. Once the soldering is done, the window is cleaned and a patina is applied to the solder lines to darken them and create less distraction.

The window is now in place in a window seat on the finished attic/third floor of our house, waiting for trim molding to cover the outside edge. The window will primarily be seen at close range, due to the placement within the room. The photo on the right was taken at night with a flash, showing how the window looks when it isn't lit by sunlight.

I think the composition of this piece is interesting, as it places Glinda front and center as the most prominent Oz figure, rather than Ozma, the ruler of the land. I imagine the main reason for this is that the original painting was planned with Glinda as a portrait of Marie Lufkin, who commissioned the piece - but it's fun to think that this was John R. Neill's take on where the power in Oz really lies!

More Progress

At this point, the Oz window is all cut and fit, painting and firing are finished, and it's ready to start assembling. There's been quite a bit of overtime work in the past two weeks! Here you can see the window laying on a light table - the window is wider than the table, so the entire image isn't lit. The shadow running down the center of the window is a support bar in the table.

On the left, I'm placing the final pieces. Now the edge of each piece needs to be wrapped in thin copper foil, in order to be able to be soldered together into a finished panel. This step is going to be delayed for a couple days, as a window emergency has popped up that we need to deal with - yes, it does happen! Once we are past that, we'll be able to continue and finish the Oz window.

Moving Along

The Oz stained glass window has progressed quite a long way at this point. Almost all of the pieces are cut, and the painting and firing are nearly finished.

On the left, you can see pieces of the Tin Woodman in a kiln ready for a firing. A tricky aspect of glass painting is the fact that many glasses will change color or transparency when fired - also, many of the paints can fade in depth of color during the time in the kiln. Consequently, it's always a bit of a leap of faith when painting and firing something!

The finished window will be about 34" x 45". Hopefully, I'll be ready to start assembling before very long!

Window Progress

The Oz window is starting to take shape. Here you can see the three figures of Glinda, Ozma and Dorothy coming together against the sky. Once the window is completed and dark lead lines are in place, the colors will be more vibrant. I've started painting faces and details on various pieces, but there's still quite a way to go!

Painting on glass is very much like china painting. The paints are actually powdered minerals which get mixed with water and gum arabic, and are fired onto the glass in a kiln. Each layer of color is fired separately, so a painted piece can have quite a few trips through the kiln before it is done. The faces seen here have had two firings, and will still have a couple more. In glass painting, you generally start with the detail work and then add layers of color - which is, in a general way, the opposite of regular painting.

Oz Window

At long last I've begun working on the Oz stained glass window I've talked about and been planning to do for the past 5 years or so. My partner & I own a stained glass studio, but as this is a personal project it's been postponed a number of times. It's finally underway, and I'll track the progress here over the next couple weeks.

This piece is based on the Oz Parade mural John R. Neill painted for Marie Lufkin. I've mentioned this before in an earlier posting (here). The original painting may or may not still exist, but there are a number of watercolor sketches for the piece, like the one on the left.

At the top of this entry, you can see the cartoon for the window - the basic pattern for cutting the glass. I've given it a general coloring, so I can keep track of what is what, but the final details are not seen in this pattern. There will be a number of painted pieces for faces, hands and other areas in the finished window. I'm also taking some liberties with color selections for a brighter finished piece, but the idea is to keep it as Neill-like as possible!

A Maid of the Frontier

Happy 4th of July!

Once again I've found a Rand McNally book with a W. W. Denslow cover design. This time it's A Maid of the Frontier, written by Henry Spofford Canfield and published in 1898.

I haven't found much information on Canfield, other than he was born in 1858 (2 years after L. Frank Baum) and seems to have specialized in western fiction. But I have to admit, I can't help thinking of Gentleman Prefer Blondes and the character Henry Spofford III - no connection, but it does jump to the mind!

At about 4.5" by 7", this is the smallest of these books that I've run across. It's a rough copy, but the cover clearly features the Alamo, as well as the lone star of Texas. I believe this may be a later printing of the book, as there is no Denslow seahorse signature on the cover and the top page edges are plain rather than gilt.

In other news, Hungry Tiger Press has redesigned their website and now has a new blog as well. As well as talking about publications currently available, more unusual and rare Oz and related items will be popping up to view. It's always fun to see things like this!

Book Fair Time

Once again, it's time for the annual local antiquarian book fair. This year there were a few dealers with Oz items - not as many as some years, which was a bit surprising as children's books are usually well represented at this fair. One of the local antique shows is also being held this same weekend, so it's a double whammy for looking for treasures.


I picked up a copy of Toodles of Treasure Town and her Snow Man, another of the many books styled after the Oz series. This particular title has an interesting Oz connection, as it was written by Frederic Chapin, who wrote the music for L. Frank Baum's 1905 failed extravaganza The Woggle-Bug. Chapin (1873 - 1947) had a later career as a screenwriter in Hollywood.

This book, which I haven't read yet, was published in 1908. Glancing through it, there are a profusion of illustrations, including color plates and color chapter titles, and a lovely set of color endpapers all of which give the feeling of an Oz book. The lively drawings were done by Merle Johnson, and are reminiscent of both W. W. Denslow and John R. Neill. I'm curious to see how the actual story holds up!

Ozian Artifacts

Last week, Profiles in History held a Hollywood auction that included a number of MGM Oz artifacts. I just ran across the catalog online, and enjoyed seeing the fantastic things that were offered. Along with keybook photo stills of sets and signed photos of actors, there were several costume pieces, some seen in the film and some not. A partial Winkie costume, the Munchkin Coroner's hat, and Margaret Hamilton's Wicked Witch hat were among the items. There was also the top of a Winkie spear, and a rehearsal shoe for Judy Garland - basically a ruby slipper without any rubies!

One of my favorite pieces was this pair of emerald gloves, which I've never seen before. Apparently they were used in the deleted Restoration Scene, when Dorothy and friends return to the Emerald City. It's quite the rhinestone work - a good companion to those famous slippers!

Bookmarks

Over the years I've run across a variety of things used as bookmarks and left in Oz books. There have been assorted dried flowers and four leaf clovers, as well as popsicle sticks and toothpicks. On the right I'm showing a Christmas tag left in a first edition copy of The Tin Woodman of Oz, presented to Dorothy (how appropriate!) from Florence and Helen.

Advertising bookmarks seem to have been popular. This first one is for Stiefel's Medicinal Soaps, which supposedly possessed healing and antiseptic properties. It was left in a copy of Rinkitink in Oz.

The horseshoe design is from Bunte Brothers, and is very vague as far as what was being sold - other than it being "of superior quality and free from adulteration". This was found in a copy of The Road to Oz.

This third example is of a more recent vintage, for Corklyn Papeteries. I don't think I've run across the word "papeteries" before! I've forgotten where this one came from.

Another fun find was the original receipt from the purchase of a copy of The Silver Princess in Oz, dated May 17, 1938. This was left in the book together with flyers for two other books - not Oz stories.

I think my favorite is this drawing of a witch, found in a copy of The Wizard of Oz. Someone was being creative with triangles!

And of course there is the map of Oz which was laid into Oz books sold in 1920. I've run across a few of these, still in their books!

Road Jackets

Here's a 1920 copy of The Road to Oz in dustjacket. What makes this special for me is the fact that the cover design features a blue background, rather than yellow.

The original Reilly & Britton version of this book only used this lovely cover image on the dustjacket, where it was originally printed with a metallic gold background. The book itself had a stamped cover with a different image. Later R&B printings used this blue background on the jacket.

When the publishers changed to Reilly & Lee, a cover label using the dustjacket art replaced the stamped cover. The earliest R&L copies used a yellow background, but this copy is from the very brief time period (1920) when Reilly & Lee used blue for the background on both the jacket and the cover label, before switching back to yellow for the remaining years.

I've wondered why they would switch back to blue for such a short time period - perhaps they were using up some leftover sheets? I've always preferred the blue to the yellow background.

The Baum family scrapbooks have an example of a printer's proof of this cover with a green background. There is also a blue wash over Dorothy's companions - apparently something that was not pursued in the final product. This rarity was featured on the rear cover of the Autumn 1990 Baum Bugle, and I've always been curious whether the green was a metallic ink, like that which was used in The Emerald City of Oz the following year. If anyone has seen this in person, I'd love to know!

Here's a lineup of the various colors tried and used on The Road to Oz dustjackets. I only have the blue one, and the green one doesn't seem to have been produced to be used, but wouldn't it be fun to have all four colors!

Martin Gardner

Noted author and scholar Martin Gardner passed away this past week at the age of 95. I first came across him when I was about 10 years old, as the author of The Annotated Alice (which was originally published in 1960 - the year I was born). I later learned of his Oz scholarship, including the fact that he was a founding member of The International Wizard of Oz Club, as well as the author of a variety of articles and essays on Oz topics.

In 1955 he wrote a two-part article on L. Frank Baum, published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, which helped bring national attention to Oz at a time when the books were being banned in many libraries across the country. He worked with Russell B. Nye to produce the first book length academic study of Oz, The Wizard of Oz and Who He Was. He even published his own Oz book, Visitors From Oz, in 1998.

Michael Hearn sent me this tribute, which was written for the Scientific American website. I'm posting it here with his permission:

MARTIN GARDNER

(1914 - 2010)


Martin Gardner was my literary godfather. He was the most generous man I have ever known. I owe him everything. When I was only 20, he convinced Clarkson N. Potter to contract my book The Annotated Wizard of Oz as a successor to his own superb and now classic The Annotated Alice. He was always recommending me to editors he knew even up to last year. We often exchanged articles before publication to get the other's thoughts on the subject. Mine benefited inestimably from his input. While he could so adroitly explain the most complex concepts to layman and expert alike, he retained the curiosity and the heart of a child. His integrity was impeccable, his prose lucid and profound.
His influence was vast. Few realize that an article he wrote on L. Frank Baum and the Oz Books in The New York Times Book Review inspired the Broadway musical The Wiz. Who else was quoted by John Fowles in The French Lieutenant's Woman and named by Nabokov a character in Ada or Ardor? Of course it was his sister Judy, not Martin, who told me that. He was the gentlest and most modest of men. A true gentleman. Like everyone who had the honor of knowing him, I feel blessed to have been his friend and he mine. I will miss him terribly.--Michael Patrick Hearn

Recent Purchases

I've been working for a long time on collecting a set of Reilly & Britton Oz titles in dustjackets, and I'm slowly closing in in my goal. The past few months have been surprisingly fruitful in terms of turning up Oz items, and I've managed to add 2 first state dustjacket copies to my collection - not something that happens every day!

Reilly & Britton dustjackets can be pretty rough when they turn up, but let's face it, these things just don't turn up that often. I've been looking for a jacketed R&B Rinkitink for quite some time, and am very pleased to have found a copy that I could add to the collection. This turned up at a smaller book fair I attended when I was in New York. I found my copy of Tin Woodman on the internet. In both cases, the cover design is repeated on the rear panel, a blurb for the story is on the front flap and ads for other Reilly & Britton books are on the rear flap.

As I've said before, it does pay to get out and look at book dealers and antique shops rather than just limiting yourself to what turns up online. Some of the R&B jackets I have are later states, but I'm hopeful of eventually getting Reilly & Britton jackets on all the Reilly & Britton books - even if they aren't all first states!

Happy Birthday!

In honor of L. Frank Baum's birthday, here's a photo of the local poppy field. Actually, it's part of a neighbor's yard a couple blocks away - every spring a mass of poppies bloom throughout the yard, and then are cut down for the grass to overtake. They've just started to burst and I thought it made an appropriate birthday greeting. So far there's no record of any neighborhood children or animals falling asleep in the flowers!

Odds & Ends

Here's a couple items I've recently run across. While in New York, I wandered through Fishs Eddy, a fun shop that carries a variety of dishes and housewares. Among other things, they offer a set of Oz drinking glasses featuring W. W. Denslow images of the famous four. Of course I picked up a set - though I think it's unfortunate that they didn't pick a better image of Dorothy! Some very fun dishes relating to Alice in Wonderland are also available.

Friends occasionally run across Oz-related items and pass them on to me - for example, this set of glittery ruby slipper soap. Perhaps they produce Glinda bubbles? It just shows how embedded the Oz imagery is, particularly the MGM movie.

Polychrome

This illustration from The Road to Oz (1909), of Polychrome being drawn back up to the rainbow by her father, is one of my favorite John R. Neill drawings. It combines all the elements I like in his work, a sense of the fantastic with beautiful line work and lovely imagery. This is a drawing I'd love to own, as it would be a highlight in any Neill collection!

Polychrome's second appearance is in Sky Island, part of L. Frank Baum's attempt to break away from the Oz series. Her entrance in this book is featured in another lovely Neill drawing, this time a double page spread. It's an elaborate drawing, but not as finely detailed as the earlier piece. Many of the same elements seen in the earlier illustration are here, but the image just doesn't feel as powerful. I think this is because the elements are more decorative, rather than involved in the drama of the moment. Of course, I wouldn't say no to this drawing - once again, it's a lovely example of work by Neill!

There are two more drawings by Neill of Polychrome returning to her rainbow. The first is in Tik-Tok of Oz. This time she is shown being unceremoniously pulled up by the disembodied arms of some of her sisters, rather than carefully gathered. And in Tin Woodman of Oz, she is pictured rising without the aid of anyone - perhaps by this time her father figured she had wandered away so many times, she was on her own for getting back home!

Some Reading

I've just finished reading a copy of The Tapestry Room, written by the British author Mrs. Molesworth in 1879, and ran across an interesting passage. The child protagonists are traveling down a river in an enchanted land, and they come to a narrow passage that they are unable to get through. After whistling 3 times, an army of frogs appears, each with a length of thread that they tie to the boat and then use to pull the boat through the passage.

I couldn't help comparing this to the rescue of the Cowardly Lion by the field mice in the poppy field, in The Wondeful Wizard of Oz - in fact, with apologies to W. W. Denslow, I conjured up an image showing this as an alternative rescue force!
Back over Christmas, I read A. S. Byatt's most recent novel, called The Children's Book. There was an interesting, if fleeting, reference to The Wizard of Oz in this story. The overall book is a sprawling story, difficult to summarize - but the point I'm referring to occurs in 1904. One of the main characters is a prominent British children's author, who is writing a play for a summer arts camp. In discussions with a German puppeteer, we have the following:

"There is something in my mind. A search for a real house in a magic world. A search for a magic house in a real world. Two worlds, inside each other."
"The Wizard of Oz," said Steyning.
"Humphry says that is an allegory about Bimetallism and the Gold Standard, with its road of gold ingots and its silver shoes."
"It has a little wizard in a huge machine," said Stern. "Which is good for marionettes or other puppets."

In the end, the play does include three adversaries - a strawman, a metal man and a beast.

I found all this interesting because the British edition of The Wizard of Oz wasn't published until 1906 - 2 years after this conversation is supposed to take place. It struck me as odd that the story would apparently be so well known among a handful of characters of various nationalities - and then of course, the theory of political allegory is thrown in for good measure. It felt out of place in the general story, but it does show how Oz can pop up anywhere - even the most unlikely places!

The Road to Oz

I've mentioned in the past that one of the things I'd love to have is a piece of original John R. Neill artwork from The Road to Oz. This title contains some of Neill's most fanciful drawings - though I do think many of the drawings in Dorothy and the Wizard and Emerald City are equally ornate. Since there were no color plates in The Road to Oz, Neill had an excellent opportunity to show his skill with full page pen & ink illustrations.

Surprisingly, the opportunity arose recently and I now have the original art for the half-title page from this book. It features one of Neill's elfish little men, possibly a Crooked Knook, this one clutching some root vegetables and pointing the way, with the book title beneath the image. It's certainly not the most elaborate of the Road drawings, but I do like that it seems to tell it's own little story!

In the book, the picture was printed with the same border that was used on many of the full page illustrations. There is no border to this drawing, but there is a note in the left bottom corner instructing the printer to add the border. I always enjoy running across production details like that.