COURTESY IN COLOR

Staying with the theme of pictures for the imagination, our secondary show in February features eight original framed posters that illustrate the various ways a child should be courteous to others. Published in 1929 by the Beckley-Cardy Company of Chicago, these illustrations (roughly 8 x 10 inches) were meant to be colored by children. Just as the statements themselves are precise & dogmatic, so too are the instructions for coloring that you see printed below the illustration. A boy should Never Brag or Boast & of course his hair should be yellow-tan, his sweater red & his trousers brown. Frozen in the act of being courteous & rendered in sharp, empty lines, these imaginary boys & girls surely set off the imaginations of school children in the late 1920s. Who wins the race to the chair? What delectable meal has mother made for her children? And what is the strange man in the back of the theater thinking? Let your imagination start working.

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ampersand vintage

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January 28th thru February 21st, 2010