This just in from Gunnar Andreassen: [I found "A Trip with Mickey Mouse" for sale on eBay some months ago, but it was too expensive for me. Fortunately the description had some good scans of artwork. A very special book as the story takes place in Great Britain. I guess that the artist that made these drawings was the same that made the Disney drawings in "Princess Elizabeth Giftbook". AUTHOR: Walt Disney
TITLE: A Trip With Mickey Mouse
PLACE OF PUBLICATION: England [London]
PUBLISHER: Birn Brothers Ltd.
PUBLICATION DATE: [1935], First Edition
FORMAT: Hardback
PAGINATION: Unpaginated
DIMENSIONS: Height 25 cm x width 19.7 cm (1 inch = 2.5 cm)
DESCRIPTION: One of the earliest UK Mickey Mouse books.
Divided into the following sections :
The sights of London
At the Mansion House
The caravan
The open road
Mickey wins the race
The lights of Blackpool
A romance at Gretna Green
The wearing of the kilt
The man from the Isle of Man
The lands of shamrock and leeks
More fun in Wales
Mickey Mouse's secret
Mickey the swimmer
The captive balloon
The cricket match
Mickey's marching song
The end of the tour
Illustrated with colour plates of the following :
"Monument to the great fire of London 1666" (frontispiece)
Fun on the scenic railway at Blackpool
Piping through the Highlands
Mickey takes the salute at the changing of the guard
Also numerous drawings, many printed in black and a single colour]
My guess is that the artist was Wilfred Haughton.
Dennis Books has one of the largest collections of foreign 1930s Disney children's books, to my knowledge. At last count he had around 150 from England alone. Plus he has dozens more from France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Italy, Bulgaria, etc. We were thinking of putting a checklist together at some point in time. Most all of the British books have beautiful full color full-page illustrations that are gorgeous.
ReplyDeleteI also meant to add the illustration for the monument to the great fire, was reproduced on a high-end laminated paper shopping bag with rope handles, that was sold at Walt Disney World back in the min-1980s. The bag was made in Japan and was sold through one of the gift shops at the Japanese pavilion in World Showcase. I still have one packed away in one of my rubbermaid bins.
ReplyDeleteWonderful stuff; and I should add that I've got a copy of this book myself, so hopefully I can share some more of it one day. It's actually got some hilarious writing—nothing beats bragging Horace lowering Mickey on a rope so he can kiss the Blarney Stone, and almost killing him in the process.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I don't think Haughton drew for any publisher but Dean. The most usual Birn Brothers and Collins artist—who also, I believe, drew the Happynak plate designs—has a much smoother line style than Haughton and tends to give Mickey and Minnie overly big heads with relatively large foreheads (the proportions are more like Haughton's Morty and Ferdie). Later in the 1930s "Brother Birn" develops another telltale sign—he often draws characters' eyes with a curved edge. (Compare to similar curved eyes on Mickey in the title panel of Manuel Gonzales' late 1940s Sundays, except "Brother Birn" applies it to the all-black 1930s eye design.)
Here's a Happynak example:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.hakes.com/item.asp?Auction=198&ItemNo=83292
(Not sure "Brother Birn" has his/her usual inker here, but there's no one else who does these big heads, huge foreheads and curved eyes.)