GLUYAS WILLIAMS is back

If you’ve spent some time here the past few years you might remember illustrator Gluyas Williams. Gluyas was the illustrator of some wonderfully odd Log Cabin Syrup ads here and here. He also did an ad for a Belden rubber plug and a nice illustration for a Cosmopolitan magazine in 1929.

Well, I'm happy to say I've found more Gluyas, including a recently purchased Robert Benchley book from 1949. I intended to eventually post the illustrations from the book, but hadn't gotten around to scanning them. And then I saw this...

Click on image to see it larger.
(SOURCE: Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus Magazine and Daily Review, 1940)

Add Bissell Sweepers to the Gluyas list. The style is so distinct, but the illustration shows neither his full name signature nor his abbreviated "GW." So I have to wonder, if this is a Gluyas knockoff or a real one. I may have solved the "mystery" by finding this online, a Bissell ad from 1935 clearly showing the Gluyas signature. But for me the mystery still remains. No signature, no proof. Faux Gluyas? I'll let the Gluyas experts deal with this.

In the meantime, here is an ad for Texaco done by Gluyas.

And here's the title page from the Peter Benchley book Chips Off the Old Benchley.

Gluyas Williams (July 23, 1888 – February 13, 1982) was an American cartoonist, notable for his contributions to The New Yorker and other major magazines.

Born in San Francisco, California, he graduated from Harvard in 1911. In college, he was a member of the Harvard Lampoon.

His cartoons employed a clean black-and-white style and often dealt with prevailing themes of the day such as Prohibition. His work appeared in Life, Collier's, Century and The New Yorker. He was also syndicated to such newspapers as The Plain Dealer. According to his obituary in The New York Times (15 April 1982, p. D7), by the time he retired in 1953, about five million regular readers had seen his cartoons, which ran in more than 70 newspapers.

During the 1940s, he worked in Boston at 194 Boylston Street. When he died at the age of 93, he was living in Newton, Massachusetts.

ReprintsPublished collections of his work include The Gluyas Williams Book (1929), Fellow Citizens (1940) and The Gluyas Williams Gallery (1957). He also illustrated books by Robert Benchley and Father of the Bride by Edward Streeter. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

To read more about Gluyas Williams visit the following sites:

www.gluyaswilliams.com
infoplease
filboidstudge
Google images

For something completely different...Ruth, from Artifact Collectors, asked me to do a guest post on my corner of the universe. I blather on about what I do giving others outside my small realm the chance to be bored by me. Thank you Ruth. It was a pleasure. And folks, visit the site, www.artifactcollectors.com, to actually read some posts by people who actually know what they're talking about.