What would we do without our pencils? We artists owe a lot of debt to the Godfather of pencil-making Johann Eberhard Faber. So brush up on your pencil history and start sketching out your tribute to Johann!
Johann Eberhard Faber was born on December 6, 1822 in the village of Stein, near the city of Nuremberg, in Bavaria. His father, George Leonard Faber, was a descendant of the famous Faber family, one of ancient lineage in Bavaria engaged in the profession of manufacturing lead pencils.
He did his primary schooling at a Volksschule and then enrolled to study law at the University of Heidelberg. But he left his studies mid-way to pursue a career in commerce in America.
He moved to the United States in 1848 and in 1849, opened a stationery store at No. 133 William Street, NYC. The store was later moved to Nos. 718-720 Broadway in 1877.
In 1852, he started to export red cedar logs to the Faber pencil factories in Stein, having realized that the red cedar available in America was ideal for lead pencils.
In 1861, he opened the first lead pencil factory along the East River, between 41st and 43rd Streets, New York City. The factory was established under the name of Eberhard Faber.
In 1872, a fire destroyed the factory in New York City, hence a new improved factory was built on a site on Kent and West streets in the Greenpoint district of Brooklyn.[1] The new factory was designed for expansion and by the time Faber died his factory was the largest of its kind in United States and the Faber name was known all over the world.
Jon Berkeley (b.1962) is a Dublin-born illustrator and children’s author.
He travelled widely in the 1980s, working freelance in London, Sydney and Hong Kong before returning to Dublin in 1992, where he formed a loose coalition known as Baggot Street Central with other leading Irish illustrators Roger O’Reilly, P.J. Lynch and Angela Clarke. He has lived in Barcelona since 1997.
His illustrations appear in high-profile publications worldwide, including Time, the Sunday Independent, Backbone and The Washington Post, and regularly feature on the cover of The Economist. His 2003 Economist cover on obesity has since been reproduced in over a dozen publications.
Jon Berkeley’s work typically features a strong central concept with a twist. He is also known for his sharp and colourful caricatures which have appeared in The Sunday Times UK, Hot Press andThe LA Times among others. He has received awards from the Society of News Design, the 4A’s, and the Institute of Creative Advertising and Design.
Writing
Berkeley is the author and illustrator of Chopsticks (2005), the story of a mouse who brings to life a carved Chinese dragon.
In 2005 he was offered six-figure advance by Harper Collins to write a trilogy of children’s novels. The first of these, The Palace of Laughter was shortlisted for the 2007 CBI Bisto award. Its sequel, The Tiger’s Egg, was released in September 2007. The third and final book in the series, The Lightning Key, was released in January 2009. The series, illustrated by Brandon Dorman, is set in and around a sinister circus, and features such colourful characters as a 400-year-old girl, a talking tiger and a stately dowager who lives in a tree. It has been described by Angie Sageas ‘a vivid journey of discovery.’
Berkeley’s latest book, The Hidden Boy, was published in February 2010. It is the first in a new series about a young girl who wins ‘the Holiday of a Lifetime’. She and her family are transported to a strange hidden world, only to find that there is no way back.
Louis-François Roubiliac (1702/1705– 11 January 1762) was a French sculptor who worked in England, one of the four most prominent sculptors in London working in the rococo style, “probably the most accomplished sculptor ever to work in England”, according to Margaret Whinney.
Roubiliac was born in Lyon and trained in the studio of Balthasar Permoser in Dresden, where Permoser, a product of Bernini’s workshop, was working for the Protestant Elector of Saxony, and later in Paris, in the studio of his fellow-townsman Nicolas Coustou. Disappointed in receiving second place in the competition for the Prix de Rome, 1730, he received his medal but not the chance to study in Rome; he moved to London instead. In 1735 he was married at St Martin’s-in-the-Fields to Caroline Magdalene Hélot, a member of the French Huguenot community in London..
In London, he was employed by “Carter, the statuary” but was introduced by Edward Walpole, son of the Prime Minister, to Henry Cheere, who took him on as an assistant. Sir Edward’s intervention resulted in the commission for half the busts in the series for Trinity College, Dublin, and for the Argyll monument commission, if Horace Walpole is to be credited. His first outstanding separate commission was the seated figure of Handel for Vauxhall Gardens, for which he was recommended by Cheere. Its prominent placement in the fashionable pleasure grounds “fixed Roubiliac’s fame” as Walpole asserted, and he was able to open the studio in St Martin’s Lane that he maintained until his death. Roubiliac was a founding member of the St Martin’s Lane Academy, a professional association and fraternity of rococo artists that was a forerunner to the Royal Academy. His studio in St Martin’s Lane became its meeting room; its members came together again for his funeral.
Handel (Victoria and Albert Museum)
Commissions for portrait busts and monuments for country churches[12] supported him until 1745,[13] when he received the first of his commissions for a funeral monument in Westminster Abbey, for the late Duke of Argyll (installed 1749). George Vertue was one of the work’s many admirers; it showed, he thought, “the greatness of his genius in his invention, design and execution, in every part equal, if not superior, to any others” outshining “for nobleness and skill all those before done by the best sculptors this fifty years past” The mourning figure of Eloquence, the notably unkind John Thomas Smith found to be “such a memorial of his powers, that even his friend Pope could not have equalled it by an epitaph”.
Even when the patrons were prominent, the churches in which the monuments were installed often lay deep in the English countryside: the monument of the Duke of Montagu (1752), soon followed by his duchess (1753), are in the church at Warkton, Northamptonshire; Horace Walpole, an inveterate country house visitor, noted them: “well-performed and magnificent, but wanting in simplicity” was his verdict.
The neoclassical eye, trained to appreciate svelte line and idealised refinements of nature, did not savour the rude vigour and immediacy of Roubiliac: the legs of the figure of Hercules, supporting the bust of Sir Peter Warren in Roubliac’s monument in Westminster Abbey (1753), J.T. Smith found “were copied from a chairman’s, and the arms from those of a waterman”
Part of the memorial (1760) placed by Ann Bellamy Lynn to her husband George at St Mary’s church Southwick, Northamptonshire
About the mid-century Roubiliac was employed for a time as a modeller at the Chelsea porcelain factory, a new outlet for sculptors’ talent in Britain; its entrepreneur Nicholas Sprimont stood godfather to the sculptor’s daughter Sophie, in 1744. For a friend like Thomas Hudson he was willing to sculpt figures of Painting and Sculpture to ornament a marble chimneypiece in Hudson’s house in Great Queen Street, Lincoln’s Inn Fields. For his friend William Hogarth he even carved a portrait of Hogarth’s dog “Trump”. His second wife (a considerable heiress) having recently died, he took a brief tour to Italy towards the end of 1752 in the company of several artists.
Soon after his death an auction sale of the contents of his studio was held, 12–15 May 1762, from which Dr Matthew Maty purchased a number of his plaster and terracotta models, which he presented to the newly-founded British Museum. Prices were derisory, and when his effects were totalled up, Roubiliac’s creditors, J.T. Smith asserted, were satisfied with one shilling sixpence in the pound.
With cinematic flair and awesome storytelling abilities Jack Kirby defined the modern world of comic book storytelling which later smoothly transitioned into film. The proof is in the popularity today of the characters he created more than 50 years ago.
Jack Kirby (August 28, 1917 – February 6, 1994),[2] born Jacob Kurtzberg, was an American comic book artist, writer and editor regarded by historians and fans as one of the major innovators and most influential creators in the comic book medium.
Growing up poor in New York City, Kurtzberg entered the nascent comics industry in the 1930s. He drew various comics features under different pen names, including Jack Curtiss, ultimately settling on Jack Kirby. In 1940, he and writer-editor Joe Simon created the highly successful superhero character Captain America for Timely Comics, predecessor of Marvel Comics. During the 1940s, Kirby, generally teamed with Simon, created numerous characters for that company and for the company that would become DC Comics.
After serving in World War II, Kirby returned to comics and worked in a variety of genres. He contributed to a number of publishers, including DC, Harvey Comics, Hillman Periodicals and Crestwood Publications, where he and Simon created the genre of romance comics. He and Simon also launched their own short-lived comic company, Mainline Publications. Kirby ultimately found himself at Timely’s 1950s iteration, Atlas Comics, later to be known as Marvel Comics. There, in the 1960s, he and writer-editor Stan Lee co-created many of Marvel’s major characters, including the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, and the Hulk. Despite the high sales and critical acclaim of the Lee-Kirby titles, however, Kirby felt treated unfairly, and left the company in 1970 for rival DC.
There Kirby created his Fourth World saga, which spanned several comics titles. While these series proved commercially unsuccessful and were canceled, several of their characters and the Fourth World mythos have continued as a significant part of the DC Universe. Kirby returned to Marvel briefly in the mid-to-late 1970s, then ventured into television animation and independent comics. In his later years, Kirby, who has been called “the William Blake of comics”, began receiving great recognition in the mainstream press for his career accomplishments, and in 1987, he, along with Carl Barks and Will Eisner, was one of the three inaugural inductees of the Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame. The Jack Kirby Awards and Jack Kirby Hall of Fame were named in his honor.
A very interesting video about Man ray’s main muse during the 1920’s. Man ray was a ground breaking artist who created his own conventions and ways of creating and clearly a bridge to the modern era. He would’ve loved photoshop!
<strong>Man Ray (born Emmanuel Radnitzky, August 27, 1890 – November 18, 1976) was an American modernist artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. He was a significant contributor to the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. He produced major works in a variety of media but considered himself a painter above all. He was best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, and he was a renowned fashion and portrait photographer. Ray is also noted for his work with photograms, which he called “rayographs” in reference to himself.
Ray’s work was not appreciated during his lifetime, with the exception of his fashion and portrait photography; especially in his native United States. Nevertheless, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since.
While living in New York City, Man Ray was visually influenced by the 1913 Armory Show and galleries of European contemporary works. His early paintings display facets of cubism. After befriending Marcel Duchamp, who was interested in showing movement in static paintings, his works began to depict movement of the figures. An example is the repetitive positions of the dancer’s skirts in The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Shadows (1916).
In 1915, Man Ray had his first solo show of paintings and drawings. His first proto-Dada object, an assemblage titled Self-Portrait, was exhibited the following year. He produced his first significant photographs in 1918.
Man Ray abandoned conventional painting to involve himself with Dada, a radical anti-art movement. He started making objects and developed unique mechanical and photographic methods of making images. For the 1918 version of Rope Dancer, he combined a spray-gun technique with a pen drawing. Like Duchamp, he did readymades—ordinary objects that are selected and modified. His Gift readymade (1921) is a flatiron with metal tacks attached to the bottom, and Enigma of Isidore Ducasse is an unseen object (a sewing machine) wrapped in cloth and tied with cord. Aerograph (1919), another work from this period, was done with airbrush on glass.
In 1920, Ray helped Duchamp make the Rotary Glass Plates, his first machine and one of the earliest examples of kinetic art. It was composed of glass plates turned by a motor. That same year, Man Ray, Katherine Dreier, and Duchamp founded the Société Anonyme, an itinerant collection that was the first museum of modern art in the U.S.
Ray teamed up with Duchamp to publish one issue of New York Dada in 1920. For Man Ray, Dada’s experimentation was no match for the wild and chaotic streets of New York. He wrote that “Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival.”
In 1913, Man Ray met his first wife, the Belgian poet Adon Lacroix, in New York. They married in 1914, separated in 1919, and formally divorced in 1937.
In July 1921, Man Ray went to live and work in Paris, France. He soon settled in the Montparnasse quarter favored by many artists. Shortly after arriving in Paris, he met and fell in love with Kiki de Montparnasse (Alice Prin), an artists’ model and celebrated character in Paris bohemian circles. Kiki was Man Ray’s companion for most of the 1920s. She became the subject of some of his most famous photographic images and starred in his experimental films. In 1929, he began a love affair with the Surrealist photographer Lee Miller.
Man Ray was represented in the first Surrealist exhibition with Jean Arp, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, and Pablo Picasso at the Galerie Pierre in Paris in 1925. A metronome with an eye, originally titled Object to Be Destroyed, was one of his works from the time. Another important work from the time was the Violon d’Ingres, a stunning photograph of Kiki de Montparnasse, styled after the painter/musician Ingres. Violon d’Ingres is a popular example of how Man Ray could juxtapose disparate elements in his photography to generate meaning.
In 1934, surrealist artist Méret Oppenheim, known for her fur-covered teacup, posed nude for Man Ray in a well-known series of photographs depicting her standing next to a printing press.
With Lee Miller, his photography assistant and lover, Man Ray reinvented the photographic technique of solarization. He also created a type of photogram he called “rayographs”, which he described as “pure dadaism”.
Duchamp, Man Ray, and Francis Picabia were friends and collaborators. The three were connected by their experimental, entertaining, and innovative art.
Later life
Man Ray was forced to return from Paris to the United States due to the Second World War. He lived in Los Angeles, California from 1940 to 1951. A few days after arriving in Los Angeles, Man Ray met Juliet Browner, a first-generation American of Romanian-Jewish lineage. She was a trained dancer and an experienced artists’ model. They began living together almost immediately. The two married in 1946 in a double wedding with their friends Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Nonetheless, he called Montparnasse home and returned there.
In 1963, he published his autobiography, Self-Portrait, which was republished in 1999 (ISBN 0-8212-2474-3).
He died in Paris on November 18, 1976 from a lung infection. He was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris. Ray’s epitaph reads “unconcerned, but not indifferent”. When Juliet Browner died in 1991, she was interred in the same tomb. Her epitaph reads “together again”. Juliet organized a trust for his work and donated much of his work to museums.
Half of a great comic strip duo. Parker & Hart. Parker’s work is outstanding with a comic touch that makes me laugh every time I look at the strip. Brilliant stuff.
Brant Parker (August 26, 1920 – April 15, 2007) was an American cartoonist. He co-created and drew The Wizard of Id comic strip until passing the job on to his son, Jeff Parker, in 1997. Cartoonist Johnny Hart, his co-creator, continued writing the strip until his own death on April 7, 2007.
Parker studied at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, California. He worked for the Walt Disney Studio before and after World War II, taking time off to serve in the United States Navy. After leaving Disney in 1945, he moved to New York to work as a political cartoonist for the Binghamton Press.
It was in New York that he met Johnny Hart in 1950; Parker was judging an art contest in which 18-year-old Hart was an entrant. The meeting was the beginning of a friendship that led to the two collaborating on The Wizard of Id in 1964. Parker teamed with Don Wilder on the political commentary strip, Goosemyer, which ran from 1981 to 1983. He collaborated with Bill Rechin and Wilder on the strips Out of Bounds, Crock. Early on, Parker left those strips to devote more time to The Wizard of Id.
Two great videos on Tamayo One is Spanish One in English. Both worth watching.
Dos grandes vídeos en Tamayo Uno es el español uno en inglés. Tanto vale la pena verlo.
Rufino Tamayo (August 26, 1899 – June 24, 1991) was a Mexican painter of Zapotec heritage, born in Oaxaca de Juárez, Mexico. Tamayo was active in the mid-20th century in Mexico and New York, painting figurative abstraction with surrealist influences.
Rufino Tamayo, along with other muralists such as Rivera, Orozco, and Siqueiros represented the twentieth century, in their native country of Mexico. After the Mexican Revolution, Tamayo devoted himself to creating an identity in his work. Tamayo expressed what he believed was the traditional Mexico and did not create more overt political art like his contemporaries, such as José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, Oswaldo Guayasamin, and David Alfaro Siqueiros. He disagreed with these muralists in their belief that the revolution was necessary for the future of Mexico; Tamayo believed that since Mexicans began the revolution they were only going to get hurt by it. He expressed this belief in his painting, Children Playing with Fire (1947). In this image, Tamayo shows two individuals being burnt by a fire they have created, symbolizing the people in Mexico being hurt by its own choice. Tamayo claimed that Mexico is becoming and will continue to be hurt from a war it created. Tamayo claimed, “We are in a dangerous situation, and the danger is that man may be absorbed and destroyed by what he has created”. Due to his opinion, he was seen by some as a “traitor” to the political cause, and he felt he could not freely express his art, so in 1926, he decided to leave Mexico and move to New York. Prior to leaving, he organized a one-man show of his work in Mexico City, where he was noticed for his individuality. Tamayo returned to Mexico in 1929 to have another solo show, this time being met with high praise and media coverage.
Rufino Tamayo’s legacy in the history of art is truly found in Tamayo’s oeuvre of original graphic prints, in which Tamayo cultivated every technique. Rufino Tamayo’s graphic work was produced between 1925 and 1991 and includes the mediums of woodcuts, lithographs, etchings and Mixografia prints. With the help of Mexican painter and engineer Luis Remba, Tamayo expanded the technical and aesthetic possibilities of the graphic arts by developing a new medium, which they named “Mixografia”. The Mixografia technique is a unique fine art printing process that allows for the production of prints with three-dimensional texture. The technique not only registered the texture and volume of Rufino Tamayo’s design, but it also granted Tamayo the freedom to use any combination of solid materials in its creation. Rufino Tamayo was delighted with the Mixografia process, and Tamayo created some 80 original Mixographs. One of their most famous Mixografia was titled Dos Personajes Atacados por Perros (Two Characters Attacked by Dogs).
In 1935, Tamayo joined the Liga de Escritores y Artistas Revolucionarios (LEAR). The LEAR was a place in which Mexican artists could express their beliefs through painting and writing towards the revolutionary war and governmental issues that were happening in México at the time. Although Tamayo did not agree with Siqueiros and Orozco, they were chosen along with four others to represent their art in the first American Artists’ Congress in New York. Now married, Rufino and Olga had planned on staying in New York for just a couple weeks while the event passed, however, they made New York their permanent home for the next decade and a half.
In 1948, his first major retrospective was done at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, and while he was still controversial, his popularity was high. Still uncomfortable with the political differences and controversy, Tamayo and Olga moved to Paris in 1949, where he was welcomed by the artists of Europe. He remained in Paris for 10 years.
Tamayo is also known as someone who enjoyed portraying women in his paintings. In his early works, he portrayed many naked women, a subject which eventually disappeared in his later work. However, he also has many paintings of his wife Olga, in which he shows her struggles through color choices and facial expressions. A portrait which can help one see the struggles the two went through is seen in the painting Rufino and Olga, 1934. In this painting, both Olga and Rufino seem broken from past struggles.
Tamayo also painted murals, some of which are displayed inside Palacio Nacional de Bellas Artes opera house in Mexico City, such as Nacimiento de la nacionalidad (Birth of the Nationality, 1952).
Walt Kelly is a sublime cartoonist who combined superb cartooning ability and deft writing to make a perfect comic strip named “Pogo”. His influence can be seen today in many strips. One of the modern giants of cartoon art.
Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr. (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973), or Walt Kelly, was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip, Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Studios, contributing to Pinocchio and Fantasia. Kelly resigned in 1941 at the age of 28 to work at Dell Comics, where he created Pogo, which eventually became his platform for political and philosophical commentary.
The Pogo comic strip was syndicated to newspapers for 26 years. The individual strips were collected into at least 20 books edited by Kelly. He received the Reuben Award for the series in 1951.
The principal characters were Pogo the Possum, Albert the Alligator, Churchy LaFemme (cf. Cherchez la femme), a turtle, Howland Owl, Beauregard (Houndog), Porkypine, and Miz Mamzelle Hepzibah, a French skunk. Kelly used the strip in part as a vehicle for his liberal and humanistic political and social views and satirized, among other things, Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anti-Communist demagogy (in the form of a shotgun-wielding bobcat named “Simple J. Malarkey”) and the sectarian and dogmatic behavior of Communists in the form of two comically doctrinaire cowbirds.
Additionally, Kelly illustrated The Glob, a children’s book about the evolution of man written by John O’Reilly and published in 1952.
The History of British Cartoons and Caricature elaborated by The Rt Hon Lord Baker in this informative often funny lecture. It’s a bit long but well worth watching if you like cartoonists and political cartoons.
Sir Henry Maximilian “Max” Beerbohm (24 August 1872 – 20 May 1956) was an English essayist, parodist, and caricaturist best known today for his 1911 novel Zuleika Dobson.
Born in London, England, at 57 Palace Gardens Terrace, Henry Maximilian Beerbohm was the youngest of nine children of a Lithuanian-born grain merchant, Julius Ewald Edward Beerbohm (1811–92). His mother was Eliza Draper Beerbohm (d. 1918), the sister of Julius’s late first wife. It was a well-to-do London family, and Beerbohm grew up with the four sisters from his father’s second marriage. One of these sisters was Agnes Mary Beerbohm (1865–1949), who became Mrs Ralph Neville in 1884; she was a friend of the artist Walter Sickert and modelled for him in his 1906 painting Fancy Dress. He was also close to four half-siblings, one of whom, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, was already a renowned stage actor when Max Beerbohm was a child. Other older half-siblings were the author and explorer Julius Beerbohm and the author Constance Beerbohm. His nieces were Viola, Felicity and Iris Tree.
From 1881 to 1885 Max — he was always called simply “Max” and it is thus that he signed his drawings — attended the day school of a Mr Wilkinson in Orme Square. Mr Wilkinson, Beerbohm later said, “gave me my love of Latin and thereby enabled me to write English”. Mrs Wilkinson taught drawing to the students, the only lessons Beerbohm ever had in the subject.
Sickert, Walter (1897), “Max Beerbohm”, Vanity Fair.
Beerbohm was educated at Charterhouse School and Merton College, Oxford from 1890, where he was Secretary of the Myrmidon Club. It was at school that he began writing. While at Oxford Beerbohm became acquainted with Oscar Wilde and his circle through his brother, Herbert Beerbohm Tree. In 1893 he met William Rothenstein, who introduced him to Aubrey Beardsley and other members of the literary and artistic circle connected with The Bodley Head. Though he was an unenthusiastic student academically, Beerbohm became a well-known figure in Oxford social circles. He also began submitting articles and caricatures to London publications, which were met enthusiastically. In March 1893 he submitted an article on Oscar Wilde to the Anglo-American Times under the pen name “An American”. Later in 1893 his essay “The Incomparable Beauty of Modern Dress” was published in the Oxford journal The Spirit Lamp by its editor, Lord Alfred Douglas.
By 1894, having developed his personality as a dandy and humorist, and already a rising star in English letters, he left Oxford without a degree. His A Defence of Cosmetics (The Pervasion of Rouge) appeared in the first edition of The Yellow Book in 1894, his friend Aubrey Beardsley being art editor at the time.
In 1895 Beerbohm went to America for several months as secretary to his brother Herbert Beerbohm Tree’s theatrical company. He was fired when he spent far too many hours polishing the business correspondence. There he became engaged to Grace Conover, an American actress in the company, a relationship that lasted several years.
On his return to England Beerbohm published his first book, The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896), a collection of his essays which had first appeared in The Yellow Book. His first piece of fiction, The Happy Hypocrite, was published in The Yellow Book in 1897. Having been interviewed by George Bernard Shaw himself, in 1898 he followed Shaw as drama critic for the Saturday Review, on whose staff he remained until 1910. At that time the Saturday Review was undergoing renewed popularity under its new owner, the writer Frank Harris, who would later become a close friend of Beerbohm’s.
Miffy the creation of Dick Bruna is a perfect example of how a simple character can be amortized over various mediums with tremendous success. Lovable and cute Miffy is a darling around the world.Thanks Dick.
Dick Bruna (b. August 23, 1927 in Utrecht) is a Dutch author, artist, illustrator and graphic designer.
Bruna is best known for his children’s books which he authored and illustrated, now numbering over 200. His best known creation is Miffy (Nijntje in the original Dutch), a small rabbit drawn with heavy graphic lines, simple shapes and primary colors. Other recurring characters include Boris the little boy bear and Barbara his girlfriend, Poppy the kind pig lady and Snuffy the dog. Additionally, Bruna has also created stories for characters such as Lottie, Farmer John, and Hettie Hedgehog.
Aside from his prolific catalog of children’s books, Bruna also illustrated and designed book covers, posters and promotional materials for his father’s publishing company A.W. Bruna and Zoon. His most popular designs graced the covers of the Zwarte Beertjes series of books.
Among his designs those for Simenon’s Maigret are quite famous. They are typified by graphic silhouettes of a pipe on various backgrounds.
Dick Bruna’s father eventually became the largest publisher in Netherlands.[citation needed] His company, A.W. Bruna & Zoon, had a bookstand at virtually every one of the country’s abundant railway stations. His father’s intentions were for Bruna to follow in his footsteps, but Bruna had different plans. Bruna’s brother eventually took over the business, but Dick Bruna always remained a close collaborator.
In 1955, while on holiday with his wife Irene and their child, he saw a rabbit hopping around their house and later made attempts to draw it, thereby creating Miffy. “Miffy” is the English-language name, whereas “Nijntje” (pronounced nein-che) is the original Dutch name of the rabbit, stemming from “konijntje” which is the diminutive form of “konijn” (rabbit).
Over the years Bruna has illustrated over 2,000 covers and over 100 posters for the family business, A.W. Bruna & Zoon. His most recognized illustrations were for the Zwarte Beertjes (English: little black bears) series of books, including The Saint, James Bond, Simenon, and Shakespeare.
In 1852, he started to export red cedar logs to the Faber pencil factories in Stein, having realized that the red cedar available in America was ideal for lead pencils.
The Illustrators Journal 