Antique Print - Victorian Era - Black Lad With Scary Bat - Mysteriously Engaging - Full Of Unanswered Questions

Treasures from THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 16, and consciously formatted to work with a standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

Here we have a fascinating and certainly mysterious late 19th century Victorian trade card. Trade cards were very popular give aways, often quite colorful, with the name of a business usually printed on the other side. People collected them and glued them into scrap books. Kids cut them into various pieces to make collages with.

This would have to have been part of a series, likely about the planets or Greek gods. The artwork is just too good to be a one off, and besides, without other cards from a series this image would simply have no context at all and no reason for being. Imagine each of the planets or Greek gods represented by children of the period, in some equally unique presentation.

That said, with the context we've theorized, I hope to find the rest of the series over time. Whether we ever find another or not, this one, delightfully strange as it is, stands on its own as an amazing, curious teaser.

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.