Where Has All the Hollings’ Art Gone?

Viewers regularly see magazine and book illustrations appraised on Antiques Roadshow, which make s one wonder where Holling and Lucille’s original art can be seen. I was ready to search a number of universities and museums for leads when Joan Hoffman answered my question. Joan is the curator behind the Leslie Area Historical Museum in Leslie, MI.

She writes that the museum has seven original paintings and many copies. Pictured here are photos of two of Holling’s watercolors. Two other originals are unique in that they are murals cut from the wall where they were painted and donated to the museum by the owner of the house originally owned by Holling’s grandparents.

Two came from a Leslie resident who is the granddaughter of Holling’s grandfather’s sister. Three other pieces, she says, were donated by Holling’s niece, Linda. Linda is a Michigan resident, Joan explains, and her family may have about 15 framed originals plus other unframed pieces of art.

Another niece, living in California, has several originals.

If you were on the road before the 1950s, you might have stopped in Chicago to see the Holling murals that were in Bob Drake's Ranch Restaurant on Michigan Ave.. There were eight murals by Holling and Lucille in the dining room on the subject of Indians and food. (Indian hunting and fishing, cultivating, gathering and preparing food, and then the feast.) There were murals over the bar. One, a stage coach mural by Holling. Joan says, “Bob’s [grandson] lives in Colorado. and made copies of what he has, which included everything from the menu, match covers, and the outside of the building and sign, all designed by the Hollings!”

At the Nine Quarter Circle Ranch in Montana (5000 Taylor Fork Rd., Gallatin Gateway, MT), some of Holling's decorative iron work still adorns walls, door hinges and door handles shaped like animals. This dude ranch is owned by the Kelsey family.



Holling’s rendition of the Lincoln Memorial, with Lincoln standing.  Signed Holling Holling.  Date unknown.

 



But the vast amount of Holling-related material is archived at the University of California-Los Angeles. Their collection includes book proofs, correspondence, news clippings, research materials, models (two, of Paddle-to-the-Sea that Holling built), drafts, illustrations, dust jackets, two sound recordings of books , sketches, drawings and working illustrations, stencils, watercolors, and cartoons. But, UCLA’s archives do not appear to have the magnificent artwork published in the Houghton-Mifflin books. The archive’s contents can be reviewed at http://cdn.calisphere.org/data/13030/bt/tf6k4007bt/files/tf6k4007bt.pdf.

Other ephemera — dust jackets and possibly some art from Houghton-Mifflin publishers — are archived at the University of Oregon and the University of Minnesota.

So the Hollings’ artwork still lives on outside of the books. You just have to look hard for it.


Monkey on a carousel, probably painted ca. 1929 when Holling was designing covers for Junior Home magazine.



Kids Putting Museums in Their Bedrooms (continued)

I’m enchanted in discovering small bits of output from long-ago artists. Thus, I was so happy to learn Mary Mosier, a follower of this blog, has ventured back in time to track down Holling newspaper dioramas. As described in the last post here, these World Museum dioramas encouraged kids to back up the artwork on sturdy paper, cut them out, and assemble them into small dioramas of the sort they hopefully had seen in museums.

Ms. Mosier wrote and shared this enthusiasm through a news feature in the San Antonio Light published on May 23, 1932:

FUN FOR YOUNG AND OLD

Seven-year-old Sam Hunter Jr., 439 McKinley avenue, admires one of the dioramas from the Sunday Light comic section which show three-dimension scenes of historic interest. This week the subject is Spain. Youthful readers of The Light are taking trips to foreign lands, living a while in the days of long ago. Arid all without leaving their living rooms or wherever it is they choose to spread out the Sunday paper to read the comics. In the big comic section of The Light finding a new way to learn all about the story and habits of people who lived when the world was young and when history was in the making. By means of dioramas, which show scenes in three dimensions, they can see just what the lands look like of which they read in school. By clipping out the weekly installment of “The World Museum” and cutting and pasting according to directions, scenes of foreign lands can be duplicated. This Sunday's natural history group by Holling Clancy Holling presents Spain with its brightly colored roof tops and snow capped mountain ranges. The accompanying printed matter gives succinctly the ebb and flow of different races across the Hispanic scene, tells of Columbus setting out for his new world. Each week a different land, different people will be presented in "The World Museum" in The Light's big colored comic section.

Ms. Mosier said it was “a bit of a fluke” that she found a lot of constructed dioramas from the Cleveland Plain Dealer for sale. The 13 samples were put together so well that they could be taken apart and reassembled.

Certain of the dioramas “are quite interesting,” she says. “The ones of nature subjects (pandas, emperor penguins, mountain goats) appear to be miniature replicas of Field Museum life size versions of the same scene, complete with text describing how the animal specimens were collected, and the artists and technicians who prepared the scene/”

She has been comparing information with Joan Hoffman at the Holling Museum in Leslie, Michigan, and sharing scanned copies. Ms. Mosier says of the covered wagon topic, “Hers were the Platt and Munk [publisher of Holling books] reprints, mine being the newspaper publication. This revealed that the reprints were to the same size as full page newspaper, and had (apparently) the same level of detail. However, the newsprint color selection is printed in more subdued…and a greater variety of colors. The reprints are very bright and with a limited color selection. I am in the process of scanning these examples to a digital format in order to preserve the originals.”

It’s wonderful that this material is being archived since, by their very nature, newspapers were not meant to vbe saved. Ms. Mosier explains her dedication to this labor:

“I enjoyed Holling's books when I was a child — Paddle-to-the Sea, Minn of the Mississippi and similar titles that he is most remembered for. As one of my current interests is American pre-history, I remembered some sections of Minn that touched on this and reacquainted myself with that book. One thing led to another and I discovered your blog, Mrs. Hoffman's work, and many other Holling's works that I had never known about.

“I am interested in paper crafting and also museum displays, and from that I became extremely interested in the World Museum features. An additional interest was that there appeared to be so few examples of them in a format similar to the original publication.

“The concept of capturing these features in a digital copy, in the original colors, is very exciting to me.” Fate, she says, brought her the collection of 13 examples on eBay. They were sold by someone with little understanding of what they were. Because they had already been cut out of the newspaper, they may have had little appeal to the typical collector of ephemera.

“I'm making digital records for my own use, and plan to build several of the dioramas for fun, but from ‘new’ printed copies,” she says. It’s not clear who owns the copyright to the World Museum artwork, but Ms. Mosier guesses it may be Platt and Munk. “It seems a shame that this and the other Holling papercraft items (the American frontiers series, the Forty-Niners, and the astonishingly beautiful eskimo village playset) are not available in print.”

“I am slowly making a listing of World Museum dioramas, dates, newspapers, where they were published, and the text on the features. This is based in the examples I have, and black and white newspaper archives I am slowly finding on line. When I exhaust this, I suppose I will start trying to find examples in hard-copy newspaper archives, starting with the ones in my state library (if any of those include the World Museum.)”

And her quest continues. She recently found a seller of single sheets of vintage comic sections, dating from 1937 and ‘38. “He had items for sale that I recognized as having appeared in newspapers that also ran World Museum. He responded to my query, writing that examples of the World Museum are pretty rare and that he himself collected them, and that he would put any ‘duplicates’ to his own collection up for sale.”

Add another credit to Ms. Mosier. She recently discovered that “the Hollings created some of the beautiful full color illustrations that appear in the first two volumes of the My Book House series, created by Olive Beaupre Miller in 1937. (Although many of the individual selections in those date back to the 1920s, I'm unsure whether the Holling's work dates to around 1937.) The first two volumes are nursery rhymes and poetry; some being English translations: In the Nursery is volume 1 or the series; Storytime is volume 2. Dover has reprinted both of these in 2013.”

Hands-on Education, or Building Your Own Museum

May 15, 1937 World Museum diorama "

To Holling’s résumé of achievements — storyteller, illustrator, naturalist — I’d suggest adding "marketing genius." In the 1930s, he created the World Museum. This was a full-page illustrated feature that ran in U.S. newspapers.

Subjects included the Grand Canyon, a buffalo hunt, and covered wagons. Children were instructed to cut the pictures apart and assemble them into a diorama like those they might have seen in natural history museums. Pasting them onto cardboard or stiff paper made the dioramas sturdier.

Mary Mosier has exchanged notes with me and Joan Hoffman, docent at the Holling museum in Michigan, on this elusive subject. Ms. Mosier reports, “The UCLA Library also appears to have working drawings of some World Museum subjects in their collection of Hollings papers.” UCLA’s descriptions and other Ms. Mosier found include these subjects that appeared in the papers: Ancient Minoan bull jumpers in an arena, undersea exploration with divers in hard suits, tropical jungle plants with explorers in pith helmets, Buffalo Bill Cody (uncertain if this features the wild west shows or Cody's early life.), cavemen scenes, pioneers or tradesmen in Conestoga wagons, reptiles, Holland, Poland, Spain, China, France and India.” She is also uncertain if the national features focused on historic or contemporary scenes.

She comments, “From what little I have seen, the World Museum dioramas were exemplary examples of a type of educational play that seems to me to stem from the public museum dioramas of figures and specimens. Given his work [Holling did] for the Field Museum this seems very natural to me. The high quality and serious purpose that seems to be displayed in the examples of the World Museum I have seen are only what one would have expected from Hollings.”

Newspapers are becoming ephemera that are rarely saved. Making the archival task more difficult, the World Museum features are often referred to as “comic strips,” and reproductions are usually found in black-and-white.

Joan Hoffman has completed some valuable research, however. “The Hollings sold the World Dioramas to the Esquire Features Syndicate,” she states. “This feature ran for 52 weeks served by this syndicate, including 28 Hearst Syndicate newspapers. They were inserts in the Sunday edition; comics are on the back side. The Michigan Holling Collection owns eight different unassembled colored World Museums. They are each 15-1/2 x 20 inches.”

Youngsters were instructed to paste these onto brown paper to make them stronger, cut out the pieces and then assemble them, she explains. “When completed, they are three-dimensional like a curved stage with figures. Some are about different cultures, historic events, animals, etc. Holling firmly believed that children could make their own museums.”

“I have never seen these for sale on Internet,” she reports. “Ours were donated by Holling's two nieces. I have not photographed them. If you live in Michigan or will be vacationing here, I would love to show you the collection.”

In the digital world children now inhabit, it’s worth wondering some “hands-on” education like Holling’s dioramas might be worth reviving and updating for today’s world.

The Book of Indians: Working from Points of Authenticity

I’ve eagerly anticipated reviewing The Book of Indians. But first I had to buy the book ($12, used, through Amazon). And read it, pushing aside other commitments. And doing some background investigation.

It’s necessary to begin by repeating that Holling and his wife Lucille were, among all their other qualities, authentic writers, illustrators, naturalists and historians. After marrying in 1925, they traveled extensively throughout the Southwest. (Holling’s first exposure had been a year-long stay in New Mexico after graduating college in 1923.)

Their work reflected their knowledge, as described by Hazel Gibb Hinman in her Master’s thesis in 1958. She reports that in 1929, they stayed at the Nine Quarter Circle guest ranch northwest of Yellowstone Park, helping design the buildings. Traveling that winter up to Alberta, Canada, they took a tepee for camping. (Going to search for tent poles, they came back to find tribeswomen had already set up their tent.) After returning to the ranch to finish their work, they went on to Lubbock, Texas, to paint murals. Then it was out to California, sketching and writing, with their Coleman stove, tent and camping equipment. Never staying overlong in one place, they drove back to Phoenix at rodeo time where they drew and painted, selling their work to finance their travels. (Ms. Hinman notes that in 1934 Holling demonstrated his fire-making skills at a luncheon lecture, starting a fire with two sticks in just seven minutes and so impressing a club member that he asked Holling to design his restaurant.)

That was just the winter of 1929, and all the while Holling and Lucille were making notes and sketches for two collaborative landmark books, The Book of Indians, (published in 1935 by Platt & Munk) and The Book of Cowboys (published a year later).

The Book of Indians attempts a grand perspective on North American tribes people in 13 chapters: An introduction into the “types of Indians living in different kinds of country,” four chapters about the home life of children and eight chapters relating their adventures. The book is essentially divided geographically among People of the Forests and Lakes, the Plains, the Deserts and Mesas, and the Rivers and the Seas

There are six beautiful colored illustrations in the plein-art style of the Southwest, plus many, many sidebar illustrations of children, their homes, tools and weapons, graphic artwork, and animals. The sepia pen-and-ink style drawings make a reader linger and digest each detail of the small pictures in the margins.

A critical element of this children’s book are the cultural and historical distinctions made by the Hollings. The Native American nations were as different from each other as the European countries, and this is explained in the first chapter. Most dramatically, the Plains Indians changed radically from planters to hunters when horses were introduced in the 1600s. The horse might well have been the cultural equivalent of the Industrial Revolution in Europe.

I believe we can forgive someone writing in the 1930s about misconceptions that today would be viewed as culturally suspect. Columbus did not think he had arrived in India. (The Spanish term might originally have been hijos in Dios—children of God.) And when a tribes person died it’s insensitive to say “He went to the Happy Hunting Ground.” But these lapses are rare in comparison to the facts that abound: how teepees are constructed and how they evolved, tool-making, housing adapted to the environment, and plant life that forms lifestyles. Happily, the Hollings provide a glossary of 31 words any pre-teen child should be familiar with.

The Book of Indians is first and foremost educational — and of particular value to home-schooled children. The writing is generally expository, with touches of drama to make the lesson more amiable. The narratives of the children, who are the main characters driving each of the geographical sections, are somewhat two-dimensional. In this, Holling’s narrative ability developed tremendously in the decade until Paddle-to-the-Sea was published. However, the Indian children’s plotting and personalities do grow toward the end when Raven joins the whale hunt and almost drowns (pp. 109-110) and when the slave child Cedar Bough negotiates her freedom by finding a great cache of copper (pp. 115-118).

The success of Holling’s writing also lies in its simplicity. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Holling's Paddle-to-the-Sea has a Fog Index of 6.9, meaning 91% of everyday words we use are more difficult to read. His Flesch Reading Index score is 75.2, meaning 90% of other vocabulary is harder. (A Flesch score of 90-100 means the writing is understood by an average 11-year-old.) And no one complains because something is too simple. Or because it lacks entertainment. So generations return to Holling Clancy Holling’s remarkable writing — and his wife’s collaborative illustration — year after year.

Notes from Leslie, Michigan

It’s been a wicked winter in many parts of the country, but life has gone on apace in Holling’s hometown of Leslie. Joan Hoffman has been wonderful about keeping me up-to-date on events there. She wrote a few weeks ago, “The little country church that the Holling's ancestors helped build at Holling Corners in 1900 probably will close soon. Their average attendance has been only eight members and they are running out of resources…. I have a picture of one of the stained glass windows in memory of the Holling family.

Two of Holling's nieces came to Leslie not long ago. The niece from California, Patricia, was there to visit her 99-yr.-old aunt. The Michigan niece, Linda, brought along some things for the museum as she was downsizing her home, Joan reports. Among the items was the plaque presented to Linda in 2000 as the Leslie High School honored her uncle posthumously at a class reunion. “Linda accepted it on behalf of the family. The Leslie mascot for their athletic teams is the Blackhawk, which is what the figure represents,” Joan explains.

The California niece goes by the last name of Clancy now, according to Joan. “Her given name was Patricia (Pat). Holling actually suggested naming her Patricia, an Irish name to go with her maiden name Clancy. The family seemed to have a habit of changing names.”

A final news note has to do with composer, musician and scholar Andre Myers. Mr. Myers, a native of Ann Arbor, composed a piece for narrator and orchestra entitled “Paddle-to-the-Sea.” It’s on an album called “Magical Tunes and Marvelous Tales” A link to this album, performed by the Plymouth Canton Symphony, can be found at http://www.michiganphil.org/Media/CD.html. His work has been called “intense and lyrical…combining narrative drama, poetry, and color.” His performances have also been an educational event for school children. Joan recalls attending a concert in which Mr. Myers narrated the piece before an audience of hundreds of fourth grade children. She recalls that this was made more memorable by having lunch and a conversation with the composer.