It’s nice to hear that
we’re adding just a bit more to the body of work attributed to Mr. Holling. Deb, a reader, reports that she discovered
our blog “while searching for information about the Kitchen Klenzer Circus
items I had purchased at an estate sale.”
She had planned to sell them on eBay
First sold in 1908, Kitchen Klenzer is
an example of an early packaged product whose illustrated label, in attempting
to depict the product “in use,” wound up creating a recursive “Droste Effect.” (Named
after Droste cocoa, which was packaged
in a similarly recursive illustrated container.) It was sold largely through newspaper advertising,
and here is where Holling’s Circus promoted the product.
Deb got in touch with the inimitable
research and museum curator Joan Hoffman.
She read the August 2011 post, she says, “That [Joan] had the elephant but not his blanket, and I had two
blankets but no elephant, I started researching your museum and found you had a
Facebook page and sent a message asking if you still needed that blanket and
offered to donate it.” Then, charitably,
she says, “I had many more pieces than you did I decided not to list it on eBay
but donate it all to you. Until I found
the circus at that sale I knew nothing of Mr. Holling. I only bought it because I was charmed by the
colors and the detail of the illustration — and I thought it would sell.
Joan sent me a note
recently, saying, “Thanks for steering this lady to us. I put together the Kitchen Klenzer Circus
elephant and camel this week and they now reside in the museum. She had the camel, zebra, and lion cutouts. Although she didn't have the elephant, for
some reason there were two elephant blankets in the estate package she bought. She also had the display box. She walked in to the museum a week ago
Thursday and gave it all to us. It was
unbelievable.”
Little stories like
this, where pieces of paper and advertising ephemera find a permanent home,
make me happy. Small events can make a
difference.
