Category: Poster Series

A Case of the Red Wobblies, 1933
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

[This is a 1 meg version of the 16 meg finished version of this cover art.]

This is the fantastic artwork for the cover of the pamphlet The General Strike for Industrial Freedom which was printed in Chicago in January 1933 by the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies). The IWW was pretty far left–okay, very far–and was founded in 1905 by Eugene V. Debs, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood, Daniel De Leon, Thomas Hagerty, Lucy Parsons, and others. By the ’30’s membership in the organization was off probably an order of magnitude, its heydey more “dey” than “hey”, its flash gone.
- This is the first of the newly-reinstated Poster Production part of this blog. I did many of these some years ago, though they were mostly technical drawings of the B-17 (G!) and such. It is available for purchase via the blog bookstore, here.
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JF Ptak

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Poster Series
PowerPunk Locomotives, in Color (1942)

JF PtakScience Books Poster Series

[Image source: Library of Congress]

This magnificent photograph was made by Jack Delano (1914-1997) while working for Roy Stryker at the Farm Security Administration agency (FSA). It is called “C & NW RR, Locomotives in the Roundhouse at Proviso Yard, Chicago, Ill.”, and was made in December 1942. This has long been one of my favorite images in the FSA color archives.

One of the great innovations in a sea of great things accomplished during the Franklin Roosevelt administrations was the formation of the Farm Security Administration, a division of the government established to help farmers through the devastating Dust Bowl and Great Depression. A subset of the FSA was a photographic unit which was set up to document the progress made by the FSA (and provide, I am sure, for some much-needed good news, a hearts-and-minds campaign). This division was headed by Roy Emerson Stryker, who wound up hiring a collection of dream-team photographers unlike any ever assembled for a single purpose. Esther Bubley, Marjory Collins, Mary Post Wolcott, Arthur Rothstein, Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, Gordon Parks, Charlotte Brooks, John Vachon, Carl Mydans, Dorothea Lange and Ben Shahn were sent out all across the country and wound up with the greatest and most beautiful photographic history ever assembled in the United States. There were about 77,000 images made, and I recall reading (somewhere) that the total budget for the Stryker group for the years 1936-1942 was about $100,000, meaning that each completed image cost just over a dollar apiece. So far as art funding by the government is concerned, that about the best it has done.

(I can offer a print of this image as all o fhe work done for the FSA and Office of War Information and for the federal government in general are without copyright or personal ownership and are the property of the people of the United States. The blog offers a 13’x19″ poster of this, here.)

And another view of the work area:

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JF Ptak

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Poster Series
A Quiet Image of Unusual Provocation (1942)

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post (Poster Series)

This is a detail from the cover to this oddly safe but slightly sotto voce absurdly-provocative Men You Like to Meet, a little pamphlet of happy tales published by the American Trucking Associations, published in 1942. There are a few stories of known and unknown truck driving heroes, saving people, helping stranded motorists, so on–some quiet, some gallant, some ambitious, and all humble. Just the sort of modern Cowboy you’d like to have on the highways. The full image is below (a poster of which is available from our Poster store, here):

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JF Ptak

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Absurdist, Unintentional — Poster Series
Industrial Steampunk and the Menace of Corporate Reach

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post–Poster Series #2

This striking image is the cover of a pro-union pamphlet leveled at the Australian iron-producer, B.H.P. (Broken Hill Proprietary, a 150-year-old firm), and published in 1943 by the Federated Ironworkers’ Association of Australia. The great social observer and artist Thomas Nast was very aware that much of his “readership” couldn’t read, and so he made his work (which was usually text-heavy) completely understandable as a purely visual message. So too for artists like the anonymous person who contributed this great cover–there is no question about what might be in the pages of the pamphlet.

It is also interesting to think about the “menacing” part of the title of this quick post–I would consider this still to be an early depiction of a robot (the term then still about a dozen years old) acting in a threatening manner towards humans–and in this case squeezing them until blood money is drawn.

This is a detail from the 600 dpi scan–click for an even larger image of this sample:

There is a very nice 13×19 inch 600 dpi poster being offered of this cover at the our POSTER Blog, here.

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JF Ptak

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Industrial & Technological art — Poster Series — Title Page Art, Beautiful
Poster Series #1–Big Red Wobblies
JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post–Poster Series 1

[This is a 1 meg version of the 16 meg finished version of this cover art.]
- This is the first of the newly-reinstated Poster Production part of this blog. I did many of these some years ago, though they were mostly technical drawings of the B-17 (G!) and such.
- The new service offers 5-25 meg reproductions on 13×19″ professional matte photographic paper using pigment inks, which will last a long time without fading.
This is the fantastic artwork for the cover of the pamphlet The General Strike for Industrial Freedom which was printed in Chicago in January 1933 by the Industrial Workers of the World (the Wobblies). The IWW was pretty far left–okay, very far–and was founded in 1905 by Eugene V. Debs, Mary Harris “Mother” Jones, William D. (“Big Bill”) Haywood, Daniel De Leon, Thomas Hagerty, Lucy Parsons, and others. By the ’30’s membership in the organization was off probably an order of magnitude, its heydey more “dey” than “hey”, its flash gone.

This is available on the new Poster Blog, here.
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JF Ptak

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Books–Great Cover Art — Poster Series