mom and i made our way over to the new england antique show of greater boston on saturday up in wilmington, ma. we're more accustomed to larger outdoor shows like bouckville & brimfield, so this was certainly a change of scenery for us and the prices where MUCH higher than they are at some of the other shows we go to so we were limited in our purchases.
i did however manage to meet a wonderful vendor who sold vintage children's illustrations. she had gorgeous french sheet music with children's illustrations on them that i would have died to have had (but my checkbook said NO NO NO), so i picked up this full set of nursery ABC simple speller lithographs instead...
being the mega-geek that i am i decided to do a little research on these lithographs last night. the only piece of information i knew about these from the seller was they are dated between 1870-1890, illustrations were by an artists named ward dell (which i could find no info on), from the mclaughlin brothers publishing firm. i learned that the mclaughlin brothers were a new york publishing firm that pioneered the systematic use of color printing technologies in children's books but that the firm eventually sold off its game/toy division to milton bradley and it's book division to grosset & dunlap. it seems as though, from what i've read, that mclaughlin brothers picture books & other illustrations are highly collectible antique lithographs. however, i don't plan on collecting but i do envision having these illustrations displayed in my (someday) baby's room on the wall, maybe in a 3 over 3 pattern. i'd love to frame them uniformly in red frames to enhance the color of each letter, similar to what steven gambrel did here...
image courtesy of elle decor magazine
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