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March 11, 2008

Freaking Out Children Since The 1930's: The Land Of Make-Believe Map By Jaro Hess

jarohess_make_believe.jpg

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 scenes
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...
Disney or Shrek.

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]

posted March 11, 2008 11:16 AM | add to del.icio.us | digg this

comments

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 PM

Here's one that is a little bigger:

http://jarohess.com/index_files/image8011.jpg

posted by: Jack at March 11, 2008 2:58 PM

My 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 PM

Thanks, 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 PM

Dear 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 AM

reminds 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 AM

There 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.


posted by: matt billings at March 14, 2008 11:38 AM
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