thus reads a short section of a collection of stories by laura bancroft called 'twinkle and chubbins.'

it was illustrated by maginel wright barney, someone who clearly had a knowledge of what was going on in japanese prints.

and well she should. her brother had quite a collection. his name was frank lloyd.



author of the book laura bancroft had
quite a well-known brother as well, l frank baum. well, laura bancroft had a brother but the author of the book did not, because the author of the book was l frank baum himself, using his sister's name.

(interestingly, jays and crows are related as well.)














just as i had dis- cov- ered this little gem (which all of the rest of you probably knew already), pk ran a wonderful oz entry by l frank, with illustrations by ww denslow (seen here as well). so benefit by the wonderful links he, as is his wont, delivers to us.

and let me point you to the complete 'twinkle and chubbins.'

blue heads

who is this bird, or these birds?

it seems unlikely that there are two completely different birds both with blue heads, red breasts, and black throats.








but... the ones on the berries have longer, thinner beaks. the ones on the cherries have a white eye-stripe and an orange tail.





the ones on the berries have no eye-stripe and a black tail which appears to be shorter.





is it a case of artistic licence?












(the two top ones on the left are by ohara koson and i couldn't retrace that third one; on the right, the top and middle are sozan ito, and the bottom one is biho hirose )

fear not the night, dears

with no pattern but beauty!

for no reason
but
joy!












welcome the light!

(kogyo tsukioka; ethel kirkpatrick; ito sozan; biho hirose; seitei (shotei) watanabe; unknown; bairei kono; chikuseki; edna boies hopkins)