This little notebook of sketches and paintings by a Charles A Foss feels a bit schizophrenic--amid a series of quite clever (and I think quite fabulous) punning pencil drawings are a number of simple little paintings of flowers. The flowers are perfectly pretty, but it is the drawings I love, and in this case might be inclined to remove some of them from the sketchbook so as to frame them. (Happily, all drawings have blanks pages on the reverse, so nothing would be lost.) My personal favorite is this illustration of "Figurative Geometry" with literal canaries for the Canary Islands, a turkey for Turkey, a fish for Finland, and a body-shaped landmass including "Headland", "Waistland" , "Leghorn" and Portsmouth". But two kindly ducks tending to a frog in "A Quack Doctor", the sad faced tree in "Weeping Will-ohs!," a hapless fellow fallen into the water while catching eels in "Bob in for Eeels!" and several more are really great too! Altogether quite a fabulous little thing.
C. 1890. All pages pictured--all done on one side of the page with the reverse left blanks. There are several blank pages at the end of the notebook, which still holds an old pencil in the loop at top. Some wear to the spine but drawings are in very good shape and if desired should be fairly easy to remove cleanly with an exacto. Flowers and pencil drawings are interspersed but my photos put pencil drawings first!
Notebook: 5 1/4" x 3 9/16" x 1/2". Pages 4 7/8" x 3 5/16".
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