Ilonka Karasz New Yorker Covers

How is it possible that someone with 186 published New Yorker covers* is not a household name?

lonka Karasz (1896-1981) was an insanely talented artist/designer/illustrator who, in addition to magazine and book covers designed pottery, textiles, furniture, silver and decorative maps. Earlier this year, at the Bard Graduate Center, Karasz scholar Ashley Callahan presented the work of Ilonka and her equally talented sister Mariska. The creative siblings came to the U.S. from Hungary in the 1910s. They settled in Greenwich Village where they became active participants in the avant garde of fashion, art and design.

Thanks to Callahan’s extensive research, each sister has had her own exhibit at the Georgia Museum of Art and there is a book to accompany each; Enchanting Modern: Ilonka Karasz and Modern Threads: Fashion and Art by Mariska Karasz. You can see 106 Karasz covers at condenaststore.com

Whichever cover you find yourself on this weekend, picnicking in the park, sunning on tar beach, or stuck in traffic, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend.

*Next most-published-New-Yorker-cover woman is Gretchen Dow Simpson with 58 covers, followed by Edna Eicke with 51, and Mary Petty with 38. 

The Arts Covers of Paris Vogue

Alfred Hitchcock

December 1974-January 1975

During the 1970s, 80s and 90s Paris Vogue used to publish an issue for December/January and devote the cover to the arts--film, music, dance, painting. I'm struck by how distinctive any non-fashion cover is for Vogue.

Salvador Dali

December 1971-December 1972

Fellini

December 1972-December 1973

Joan Miro

December 1979-December 1980

Andy Warhol

December 1983-January 1984

Franco Zefferelli

December 1984-January 1985

David Hockney

December 1985-January 1986

Baryshnikov

December 1986-January 1987

Kurosawa

December 1988-January 1989

Martin Scorsese

December 1990-January 1991

Tapies

December 1991-January 1992

Note to subscribers: If you subscribe to ALL MY EYES via email, then the other day you received five posts at once. That was not intentional. In the last few months, it seems that when I paste text from Microsoft Word into Blogger, some very nasty code comes along with it and disables recognition by FeedBurner, which updates feeds and emails new posts. All subsequent posts are also disabled. Removing the code and updating the post doesn't fix the glitch. So I reposted all the offensive entries and dated them with when they were originally posted. I did not realize that they would all get sent at once. Sorry to overwhelm you all at the start of the new year.

All Time Covers

No, there isn't a hyphen missing between “All” and “Time.” This image really is every cover of Time magazine, from the first issue in 1923 through the summer of 2009, 4535 covers in total. I uploaded the file at it's large size, so you can click to see the image bigger.

See more of the Mapping Time project by Jeremy Douglass and Lev Manovich of Software Studies Initiative, here.

Via La boite verte

Back to School, Estonian Style

September 1939
Today is the first day of school for 1.1 million New York City public school kids. Why, the air positively crackles with the familiar strains of dread, excitement, anxiety, and relief (for parents).

Above, the September 1939 cover of the weekly Estonian picture magazine, Nadal Pildis. Just imagine the current events classes those kids had that year!

Below, issues depicting the summer fun we leave behind.

1937

August 1937

July 1939

July 1939 (inside)

1936

1939 (inside)

September 1937

July 1937
Covers are all from a collection of Vintage Estonian Magazines created by "katytarkpea," on scribd.

15 dana, and counting ...

1972

Confession. I’ve been holding out. Big time. I’m so overwhelmed with all there is to see here in Croatia that I’ve not been able to digest, let alone post, as quickly as I would like to. Which might be why my being stranded in Zagreb for another week was meant to be.

You see, due to the storm-formerly-know-as Hurricane Irene, my flight back to NYC last Saturday was cancelled. Which meant that I was able to go to the Britanski antiques market here on Sunday. As I said, meant to be. I found a bunch of issues of an arts and culture magazine called 15 dana which means “15 days.” That’s exactly how long I’d been in the country, as of Sunday. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it was meant to be.

The covers here are from the 1960s and 70s. There’s lots of great stuff inside as well--avant garde film, industrial design, Bohumil Stepan illustration, etc. But for now, the covers.

November 1969


March 1971


December 1969


1963


June-July 1966


1965


March 1966


February 1968

'The World of Interiors' Covers

“I am not a library, I am not an archive.” That is the mantra I repeat as I struggle to let go of a stack of magazines or any other piece of paper I don’t have room for, or that I don’t “need.”

In the mid 1990s, I subscribed to UK-based The World of Interiors. I loved being surprised each month by the inventive design and quirky subject-matter, and I still cannot part with them. When I contemplate tossing them, from time to time, I flip “once more” only to find a piece of crucial information/inspiration. That’s all I need to call off the purge. Recently, when I thought, for a few minutes, that I could actually chuck them, these first two issues were the ones I thought I would keep just for the covers.

The bejeweled feet, above, gracing the March 2000 cover, are embroidered Moroccan slippers. How perfect they are on the staircase in the Tangier home belonging to antiques dealer and collector Christopher Gibbs.


The bold wool fabric, on the cover of the March 1998 issue, is not related to the longest, nor the most significant story in the issue. It is linked to a two-page story wedged into the listings section at the end of the book. Upcoming at a Sotheby’s auction, would be an archive of swatch books from the Calico Printers Association, a society of the many textile weavers and printers located during the 19th Century in Lanceshire’s Rossendale Valley. These amazing designs, which could easily be 1920s art deco, were actually produced in 1845.




I’m throwing in a few more of the covers from the late 1990s. These issues ran without cover lines, and in those days, the issues came wrapped, so there was no bar-code disturbance either.

June 1997

July 1998

October 1996

May 1997

December 1998