New Friends

Back in September I posted a little preview for my next pair of Oz figures. They've been moving slowly, but I am finally making progress on Jack Pumpkinhead and the Sawhorse. Scraps and the Scarecrow are looking forward to some new companions!

Here's Jack - he hasn't progressed too far yet, but I hope to make some headway in the next week or two. At the moment, I'm just working on pegging him together - I've been using found sticks and branches to work with, which keeps things interesting!




The Sawhorse is much further along. At this point I'm playing with various accessories and trims - in his illustrations, John R. Neill did enjoy throwing everything he could at this poor creature by way of tassels and ribbons, etc. I'll see what I can do!

Flying Girls and Boys

After the success of the Wright brothers in 1903, Reilly & Britton didn't waste much time jumping on the concept of the flying novel for teens. In The Wizard of Oz, the wizard leaves Oz by hot air balloon, but by 1909 boys, girls, everyone was flying airplanes! Even a 10 year old could do it, as seen in The Flight Brothers from 1912.


L. Frank Baum contributed to the trend with the two Flying Girl titles written under his Edith Van Dyne pseudonym. Other authors wrote the Airship Boys, the Aeroplane Boys, and the Boy Scouts of the Air series. The boys seem to have been more popular than the girls, as Baum's series only extended to 2 books while some of the other series continued to 8 or more titles.

In the 1930's, Reilly & Lee resurrected some of these teen novels using new titles and packaging. I was recently given a copy of A Wild Night on Lost Island (quite a suggestive title), which is a repackaged Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island. The story remains the same, involving a canoe accident and adventures on a sinister island.

On the dustjacket flap several other titles are listed which seem to be similarly renamed books from 20 years earlier. On the Hungry Tiger Talk blog, one of these titles was featured - Jane Pellew in Kentucky, a reissue of The Camp Fire Girls in Old Kentucky. Unfortunately, none of Baum's work in this line was revived!

A Fun Project

On my last entry I received a comment from a reader directing me to a project she and her son had completed - a version of The Wizard of Oz featuring Riley and Company, created in rubber stamping and scrapbook techniques.
It's impressive - you can take a look here - And the stamps can be found here!

When Ozzy Houses Go Bad.....

Happy Halloween!

Denslow and Roycroft

An interesting item was auctioned at Swann Galleries in New York this past week - a copy of The Deserted Village, by Oliver Goldsmith, which was published by the Roycroft Press in 1898. This particular copy has sketches by W. W. Denslow sprinkled throughout the book, on the page borders.

Roycroft issued various titles with hand illumination as well as extra illustrations, but it's great fun - and quite a rarity - to see one done by Denslow. This was produced in the first year he traveled to East Aurora to work with the Roycrofters.

Unfortunately I didn't win this book at the auction, but I think it's a fascinating Denslow piece!

1905 Theater

Here are two pieces of sheet music I picked up in a mixed lot recently - Moon Song from The Gingerbread Man, and A String of Pearls from The Pearl and the Pumpkin. Both are from 1905 Broadway shows with slight connections to L. Frank Baum and Oz.

The most obvious connection is the success of The Wizard of Oz on Broadway in 1903. This inspired a plethora of fairyland extravaganzas, some successful, others not. On the Gingerbread Man sheet music, the show is labeled a "Fanciful Fairyesque" - what a great description!

The Gin- gerbread Man is interesting because the main character is named John Dough. In 1906, Baum would publish John Dough and the Cherub which has no connection to this show aside from the similarity of the title character, a living gingerbread man. The composer for the show was A. Baldwin Sloane, who also wrote some songs that were used in the stage production of The Wizard of Oz. Perhaps he and Baum discussed the idea of a living gingerbread man?

The Pearl and the Pumpkin was co-written by W. W. Denslow, the illustrator of The Wizard of Oz. This show also started as a children's book which was transferred to the stage. While it didn't achieve the success of Oz, it did manage a short run. Yet another John Dough - this time spelled Doe - turns up, this time a Baker/Pie Man! It's a pity that Denslow didn't design the sheet music cover used for selections from this show.

Hungry Tiger Press features some musical selections from these shows in their Tiger Tunes, at the Hungry Tiger website.

Halloween is Coming

Ok...I know this isn't Oz related, but I had to share it. While walking our dogs this evening, Irwin & I came across this totally unique lawn decoration about a block from our house. It made us both laugh out loud and we wanted to get a photo before something happened to it - it definitely ranks as one of the most original pieces of yard art I've seen!

A New Post!

It's been a hectic couple weeks here, so I'm afraid I've been neglecting my postings!

Here's a pic of the start of another Oz project - some companions for my Scarecrow and Scraps figures. I have a little ways to go, but they'll get done eventually...

Cloud Fairies and Mist Maidens

One of the fun things about the Oz series are the many unusual characters that turn up and make short appearances, often never to be seen again. One of my favorites occurs in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, where there is a brief passage concerning the cloud fairies. I've always thought these were a lovely creation by L. Frank Baum - Dorothy, Zeb, and the Wizard come across these delicate creatures, as they are climbing back to the surface of the earth after falling through an earthquake crack. The segment is very short, but John R. Neill devoted one of the book's 16 color plates to the subject.

We meet very similar beings in Glinda of Oz, this time the mist maidens. Ozma calls upon them to help herself and Dorothy cross a deep misty valley. Here again, the encounter is brief but a color plate was designed to picture it.

I've always liked these slight references to creatures that play no major part in the main Oz series. Recently while doing some research for work, I ran across a couple interesting paintings which brought these to mind. One is by Herbert Draper from 1912 called The Mountain Mists, (shown below on the right), the other by Fabio Cipolla called The Maidens in the Mist, (shown at the bottom).

I can't help being struck by the similarities of the paintings and the visual conceptions of John R. Neill. Of course, Neill's cloud fairies were drawn 4 years before Draper's Mountain Mists. I haven't found a date for the Cipolla painting, but the artist lived from 1854 to 1924. Or maybe 1852 to 1935. It's interesting how uncertain basic facts can be on the internet! I'm curious as to the date of the Cipolla painting - who knows, it may have helped inspire Neill - or even Baum's description of mist rising over a billowing black sea!

Margaret Hamilton

Many Oz fans have stories of meeting Margaret Hamilton, the actress who played the frightful Wicked Witch of the West in the famous 1939 MGM film. In fact, when one of my sisters was in 5th grade, Miss Hamilton came and spoke to her class....unfortunately, it wasn't MY class!


But I did get to see Margaret Hamilton perform on stage, during the original national tour of A Little Night Music. I was 14 at the time, and convinced my parents to take me into Philadelphia for a performance - I was already turning into a fan of Stephen Sondheim. Miss Hamilton was playing Madame Armfeldt, the role recently revived by Angela Lansbury and currently being played by Elaine Stritch (!). Unfortunately, I don't have a strong memory of her performance - I was too much in awe of the entire production! It's still one of my favorites, and I can't help feeling that the current revival on Broadway is a weak shadow of the original.

Life Begins at 8:40

I've just picked up a new recording of Life Begins at 8:40, a Broadway revue from 1936. At first this doesn't seem to have any Oz relevance, but it warrants a closer look!

Life Begins at 8:40 was written by Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg, with some lyric assistance from Ira Gershwin. Of course Arlen and Harburg went on to write the songs for MGM's 1939 The Wizard of Oz. This review from 1936 is intriguing for bringing the songwriting team together with Ray Bolger and Bert Lahr, who both starred in the review, and later in the Oz movie. So, a number of the future Oz elements were combined 3 years earlier!

This also gave the songwriting team some experience in writing for their stars - in particular, Bert Lahr. One of the songs in the revue is Things, which parodies an operatic baritone - on this recording, it's performed by Brad Oscar. It's easy to see this as a precursor to If I Were King of the Forest! Harold Arlen later declared that no one could write better for Lahr than Harburg and himself.

Josef Pierre Nuyttens

A couple weeks ago I bought this little painting of a cat by Josef Pierre Nuyttens. It really has nothing to do with Oz, but I couldn't resist - it's charming in a silly way. It was offered once on eBay and didn't sell, but it was offered again at a third of the original price and I fell for it.

Nuyttens was a well regarded artist in the early to mid-20th century who had a long career as a painter, illustrator, printmaker, costume designer, and club owner. He produced society portraits and sheet music covers. In 1920, the Belgian royal family commissioned portraits and he was decorated by King Albert I with a Knighthood in the Order of King Leopold II. Nuyttens was born in Belgium in 1877 and moved to America in 1894, settling and working in Chicago.

Nuyttens also illustrated several books for Reilly & Britton, including some titles written by L. Frank Baum. Most of these were published under various pseudonyms, although Phoebe Daring was in Baum's name. Other books include the two Flying Girl titles, and the second edition of Annabel. Non-Baum books include the adult novel Kenny, two titles in the Azalea series, and a dustjacket for the Captain Becky series - with someone else's interior illustrations!

I don't know when this painting is from, as it isn't dated - Nuyttens lived until 1960, and I assume this is from a later period. Apparently he was an incessant smoker, and died in a house fire which also destroyed quite a bit of his original work.

Dodd's Sister

The Evolution of Dodd's Sister is a companion book to The Evolution of Dodd, both published by Rand McNally in 1897. Just as Dodd discussed proper means of educating boys, Dodd's Sister turns the attention to the upbringing of girls.

W. W. Denslow's cover for Dodd's Sister is clearly designed to accompany his cover for Dodd. The same colors of teal, gray and white are used, as well as the same layout with a band of color at the top and a single child in the lower portion.

These two books were clearly meant to be a pair, but it's fun to see that The Romance of a Child (also from 1897) was designed in very much the same manner. It fits together nicely with these titles to create a trio of covers.

East is East and West is West....Sometimes

A few posts back, I had a question from a reader asking about Oz maps and why the Munchkins and Winkies switch locations on various maps. This is one of those perennial questions that has no definite answer, but there are a number of theories.

The first map of Oz was created as a glass slide for L. Frank Baum's traveling show The Fairylogue and Radio Plays. On this simple map, seen on the right from The Annotated Wizard of Oz, the Munchkins are in the east and the Winkies are in the west, as described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

The next map came out in 1914, as the endpapers of Tik-Tok of Oz. On this much more detailed map, the Munchkins are on the left, which is usually the west, and the Winkies are on the right, usually the east. However, the points on the compass rose clearly place the east on the left and the west on the right. This is unlike any standard map, but Oz is a magical land - perhaps that is simply how things work there!

When this map was reprinted in 1920 to hand out with Oz books purchased that year, someone seems to have noticed the unusual compass points and corrected them. The Munchkins are now irrevocably in the west, and the Winkies in the east. Ruth Plumly Thompson regularly referenced the Oz map when writing her stories, so the two countries remained in their incorrect locations.

When new maps were created in the 1960s by Oz Club members James Haff and Dick Martin, the odd placement of Munchkins and Winkies was corrected. The new maps used a standard compass rose, and the entire country was reworked to try and clear up location discrepancies. This is the same basic map currently available from the International Wizard of Oz Club, although it has been updated a few times over the years. But I still like the original map in Tik-Tok with it's unique directions - that's how I think the map should be!

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!