These are pages from a late 1930s paint book. The 128 pages appear to be drawn by several illustrators, which was not usual in these very old coloring books. I think these Mother Goose pages have a unique and interesting style. Of course, I was also thinking they would make wonderful quilt blocks, but I might remove the borders and fill in the missing lines on some of the characters. A few of the pages were colored in, and I didn’t take the time to completely clean them up.
Update: Recently I discovered some line drawings by Fern Bisel Peat which are very similar in style to these — I think these uncredited illustrations may be hers.
Mammoth Paint Book
Whitman Publishing, 1939
My goodness! The look on Humpty’s face! He looks like a bully. I think someone might have pushed him off the wall from behind!
I think the rest of them look like they could be dancing in a ‘Mother Goose Ballet’. Very graceful.
HA! I just read Jan’s comment. I agree, Humpty Dumpty might-a had it coming! Peter, Peter could probably use a little Humpty treatment as well!
One of the tatting blogs talked about today being St. Catherine’s day – she was the patron saint of spinners and the lacemakers considered her theirs as well – SAD end, poor lady. Anyway, Jack be Nimble was mentioned also. Apparently the rhyme is part of a lace-makers’ custom for this day. The boys and girls would say the rhyme inserting the jumper’s name and each would take a turn trying to jump the candlestick (which they say was around 2.5 ft tall) without putting out the flame. The boys had a clear advantage here – no swishing skirts. If the flame went out they were said to have bad luck for the next twelve months. Apparently their work was VERY demanding so they played hard when they could.
Classed dismissed, there will be a quiz tomorrow. 🙂
I was checking my reader and it occured to me I hadn’t read anything from you for a while. Somehow your blog got deleted from my reader! The upside is I had several posts to catch up, and that was fun. Happy Thanksgiving!
Those are amazing and I agree, Humpty looks rather mean! The Mary Mary pic reminds me of a Mary Englebriet picture. Where in the world do you find these wonderful books???