Archive for February 2007
February 19, 2007
The seller with all the PM Daily Newspapers has found another example of Jack's work in an issue from March 23, 1941.
I am also looking at a fourth issue of Yachting magazine with Jack's work on the cover (June 1948) and I have just discovered an issue of The Horseman's Bible in Italian for sale as well. Plenty of possible new items.
A news item from the Art section of the Reading Eagle.
The Institute of the Arts will present the first Coggins Award to Berks County artist Bruce Becker on Friday at a ticketed event at Stirling Mansion.
The award, created in memory of Jack Coggins, an internationally known artist who taught master classes at the institute for almost 50 years, recognizes an outstanding artist who has been associated with the institute and exemplifies the values expressed through Coggins' life and work.
Becker's work has been exhibited in numerous international venues, and he has painted special collections for such groups as Juvenile Diabetes, The Boy Scouts of America, Survivors of 9/11 and, most recently, The Bruce Becker Nickel Mines School Fund.
Ticket information: 610-376-1576.
February 17, 2007
The PM New York Daily Newspaper with Jack's illustrations has arrived here, and, very surprisingly, the two copies of Yachting Magazine have arrived as well. Sometimes surface mail can take 10-12 weeks, in this case it took less than 2 weeks - obviously the package came by air for some reason.
I have scanned the new items and added them to the website. The PM illustrations can be seen here and since I now have three examples of the Yachting Magazine covers in the collection and another possible, I have created a new page for them here.
February 10, 2007
I have finally received the two copies of the Space Books in German - they were published by a "Buchclub" and are undated, but they are in excellent condition. I also won the two Yachting magazines with cover art by Jack on eBay, now begins the long wait for surface mail delivery - they are heavy books and would cost too much by air mail to Australia from the US.
Since I have been finding new items to display, I have added new menus to the website to cater for the increasing number of categories, and I have also added some more detail about some of the items on display. In the Advertisements section, I have included images of the complete adverts to give visitors an idea of the jingoistic advertising copy which was used in the war years. Modern marketing people certainly didn't invent over-the-top adverts!
Visitor numbers to the website are slowly climbing, and I think they are quite respectable for a limited interest site such as this one. Last year there was a total of almost 60,000 hits; this year so far the total hits is nearly 10,000 already. Unfortunately there is no longer any email feedback, so I have no idea if the vsiitors are finding the information interesting or useful. The only indicator I have is the length of stay - last year approximately 45% of visitors stayed longer than 30 seconds - the average stay was 5.5 minutes. The Wikipedia entry which I also wrote is generating a lot of traffic on this site from the image links, so I presume that there are a lot of visitors there as well.
February 1, 2007
I have finally located a copy of a PM Newspaper with some of Jack's illustrations - April 29, 1941. An eBay seller in New York has a large collection of PMs for sale, and was kind enough to look through them and list the contents. There were several other bidders interested in this issue, but I managed to win it. I have also found two Yachting magazines on eBay which have cover art by Jack - I am currently bidding on these - they are from March 1951 and August 1952. The images below show these three items.
I will be adding better scans of these illustrations as soon as they come to hand. I am also expecting delivery in the very near future of the two German issues of the space books - they have apparently finally arrived in Australia after 10 weeks.
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