In 1930, Czech artist Jaro Hess' painting, "Adventure in Storyland," which offered a dazzling Grand Unifying Theory of the world's fairy tales, was turned into a poster by The Child's Wonderland Company of Grand Rapids, Michigan. It's been reissued by various companies over the years; apparently the copyright's currently held by Hagstrom Map Company, who licensed it to Rosen-Ducat, who's reprinting it again.
It all sounds so straightforward now, but maybe that's because I haven't spent years since my childhood trying to track this thing down, like DT reader Chris did:
My mom bought this amazing giant map/poster of "The Land of Make Believe" around 1970, and I grew up with it hanging on my bedroom wall. The scenesDisney or Shrek.
and characters from it are etched in my brain, although sadly Mom gave it
away to a daycare center when I was 10 or so. (About once a year since
1997 or so, I've done Google and eBay searches, and I always ask in poster
shops if anyone had ever heard of the poster - since I didn't know the
name of the illustrator - just that it was lebeled "The Land of Make
Believe")...It's neat to see something like this where the characters
come from a time before Disney "standardized" all fairy tale imagery. Of course I've ordered a reprint, so I can at least give my younger son the same nightmares I had...
RDI sells two 24.5 x 36-in. versions of "The Land of Make-Believe," $65 or $95, depending on the type of paper. The freak-out effect is probably the same. [jarohesslomb.com via basic joy, thanks dt reader chris]
Where can I see a bigger version of this poster? I want to check it out more before freaking out my kids :)
[RDI has some detail shots of the reprint, and basic joy has some details of her original, 1930 edition. -ed.]
posted by: henitsirk at March 11, 2008 2:07 PMHere's one that is a little bigger:
http://jarohess.com/index_files/image8011.jpg
posted by: Jack at March 11, 2008 2:58 PMMy pediatrician had this in his office back in the early 70s--I'd forgotten about it until now. Nice to see it again! (By contrast, the office of my sons' pediatrician has paintings of psychotic-looking clowns, painted I think by the doctor himself. I won't be looking for reproductions of those any time soon.)
posted by: adam at March 11, 2008 3:12 PMThanks, I didn't catch the image gallery the first time. It's very cool! But I'm not sure I'm up for $65 for a poster at this point.
posted by: henitsirk at March 11, 2008 7:53 PMDear Lord... forgot that I had one of these bad boys when I was little. I wonder what happened to it?
posted by: dylandog at March 12, 2008 2:28 AMreminds me of Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:GardenED.jpg
[another nursery classic! -ed.]
posted by: Noisette's Maman at March 12, 2008 10:35 AMThere was an indie rock band from Athens, Georgia that used part of the poster as album art for an album called When the Red King Comes. It's has a great Brian Eno cover and some great originals, too.