Gibson artist Bernhardt Wall died in 1956.
He was a rather old man by then, having been born in 1872.
He was a Gibson artist who designed more than 5,000 postcards and was known as the "Postcard King" during his lifetime.
So if you've looked at old postcards in a flea market, you've almost certainly seen his work.
I like the zest of his Halloween cards, his brash use of jarring color and his playful sense of composition.
Wall's anthropomorphic jack-o'-lanterns are pretty distinctive.
Unfortunately, when you do a Google search for his work, you will see some cards featuring pretty awful racial stereotypes. This is a small number of his cards and they don't seem to be particularly malicious. But they are offensive. I know a lot of black collectors love those sorts of things. For example, S. Epatha Merkerson has a large collection of this sort of artistic production, and has a great explanation of why she collects such works. (I just found this out because she was featured in a design book I recently read about showcasing one's collections.)
Here are a just a few of the Wall postcards that caught my eye just now. If you do a Google image search, you'll find thousands more. He illustrated all the holidays and designed occasional cards as well.
The card with the raven pun is probably not actually a Halloween card, but it seemed to fit the holiday thematically (via Poe).
He was a rather old man by then, having been born in 1872.
He was a Gibson artist who designed more than 5,000 postcards and was known as the "Postcard King" during his lifetime.
So if you've looked at old postcards in a flea market, you've almost certainly seen his work.
I like the zest of his Halloween cards, his brash use of jarring color and his playful sense of composition.
Wall's anthropomorphic jack-o'-lanterns are pretty distinctive.
Unfortunately, when you do a Google search for his work, you will see some cards featuring pretty awful racial stereotypes. This is a small number of his cards and they don't seem to be particularly malicious. But they are offensive. I know a lot of black collectors love those sorts of things. For example, S. Epatha Merkerson has a large collection of this sort of artistic production, and has a great explanation of why she collects such works. (I just found this out because she was featured in a design book I recently read about showcasing one's collections.)
Here are a just a few of the Wall postcards that caught my eye just now. If you do a Google image search, you'll find thousands more. He illustrated all the holidays and designed occasional cards as well.
The card with the raven pun is probably not actually a Halloween card, but it seemed to fit the holiday thematically (via Poe).
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