Printing records....

General art-related discussion.
Parrish02
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Fri Oct 26, 2007 2:16 pm

As for the BG-103, what Phil says is true. I have 13 copies here and all of the light copies have a white border, all of the dark are full bleed. Also, the spot that Eric describes varies on my copies from very visible to virtually non existent. Based on how light the spot is on one copy I have, it *might* be possible that reprints exist without the spot but someone would have to come up with a copy to prove it. I'm not saying that the spot is not a way to tell, just suggesting that there might be copies that lack it. The light copies with the white border are 1/4" wider than the dark, so that should be pretty definitive in itself.

Also, the BG-104 seems to have two varieties - the white border and a full bleed - also with a slight color difference. Let's see what Phil has on that one.

Sorry to come in so late on this conversation - I wasn't aware of it!

Mike Storeim
therose7
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Fri Oct 26, 2007 2:19 pm

hi phil, if you check the copies of the originals and the reprints of bg-103 in the vault, you will find variations in the border or lack of it. i really would have liked to use the lack of the border as a signifier, but there were exceptions. the dot seems to be the only consistent thing. please check out what i just posted in the other strand about bg-86. thanks, eric
therose7
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Sat Oct 27, 2007 12:39 pm

this post is in answer to your questions posted on 10/9/07. part of your post reads,

I was flipping through the latest version of Eric's book that I have and randomly stopped on page 98. I then just compared FD069, FD070 and FD071 in the latest book and in an earlier version. For FD070, for example, it states that: "Printing records indicate that this was printed twice as a poster. Both printings are labeled NO.70-1, and they are indistinguishable." In the most recent version it says the following, "At this point in 1994 only one variant of this poster is known to exist. Both the poster and postcard that match show slight variations in lavender running from lighter to darker." Next I went and checked the printing records that I have and I could only find a single printing record (California Litho Plate Company invoice number 9818, dated 6-30-67. Will try to photograph and post). So my question becomes this - are my printing records incomplete? What does "variant" mean in the most recent version of the book? How can there be a variant when there is only one printing, variant suggests different versions? What information was found between the editions to warrant the changes?

to answer your questions in the order you asked them, yes, your printing records are incomplete. i am in possession of a copy of a california litho plate printing receipt which indicates there was a second printing, obviously a reprint because the receipt dates well after the concert, done of fd-70.

“a variant is something that exhibits variation from a standard or norm.” this is quoted from a merriam webster dictionary. i used “variant” here loosely to indicate there was one known example. since the next paragraph shows it is reasonable to assume there is another example, i believe the term “variant” is acceptable.

if you look at all the versions of my guide done since 1994, you will find the entry after FD-70-OP-1 is “FD-70-RP-2 This number is reserved for future use.”

the meaning i intend to convey by this along with the statement “only one variant is known to exist” is that there is only one example of fd-70 that i have seen and cataloged, but that printing records show that there is another one out there which i have not yet seen and cataloged.

this printing receipt lists other reprints, examples of which i have seen, and i believe it is reasonable to assume that a reprint of fd-70 exists. it is a case like fd-39 where there is a receipt showing it was reprinted along with 19 other posters and all 19 others have been found and cataloged but the fd-39 is still unknown to either myself or jacaeber. we are not sure if it is unknown because it looks so much like the other known reprint of fd-39 that we have missed it or because although it is dramatically different no one has pointed it out to any of the serious collectors or dealers who usually notify me when something new appears.

what this means is that there is no contradiction between the earlier edition of my guide which you cite here and the later one. i just expressed the situation differently because i actually do not know if they are indistinguishable or if i just have not seen the second printing of fd-70. in 1979 when i wrote the first guide, i had no idea that large numbers of family dog posters were printed and shipped out of the bay area, and i thought i had seen everything. i wrongly assumed that if neither i nor any of the other serious early collectors (and there were quite a few, some of whom were as sharp eyed as those active today) had noticed the two different versions, they must be so much alike that they were not recognizable. keep in mind that some of the versions we now are noticing like fd-72-op-1 and fd-72-rp-3 are really close in appearance. i just had assumed that was the case with fd-70, that they were too much alike to recognize the difference, but until you or i or someone else notices some other version (variant) of fd-70, we just will not know.

this situation is not unlike the situation with the bill graham numbers between 66 and 114 which we are dealing with now. some of these reprintings were completely unknown to me until now because they all were shipped to new york and no one pointed them out to me, and some of them so closely resembled other printings that i did not realize they were different printings until i recently learned of the printing records which you have not shared with me over the last 15 years.


here is the next question in your post of 10/9/07

The next poster was FD071. In the very first version of the book it states that "Both the postcard and the poster were only printed once." In the latest version of the book it lists two printings. My question is this - what caused this change? Did someone notice a strong difference and called you with it? Is this something you found out a bit later on yourself? Again, what I'm interested here is the process, the "why".

this is a question you have asked in public forums several times before, most notably in your july 2001 attachment to your listing for ebay item 1446507650. i have responded to it at great length and in great detail. this response appears in all the more recent editions of my guide and runs to five pages of text. i believe there is no point in placing it here. please just refer to the section “response to phil cushway” in any of the last three editions of my guide. as they say in court, “asked and answered.”

the next paragraph of your questions is

We feel it's important to list the reasons for the changes in this book. People should know the who, how and why of the new "discoveries". This has been my point the whole time, not to say he's right or he's wrong, just to make sure whatever new information is found is documented.

while i do not list the reasoning over and over on each individual item for the changes covered by those items dealt with at length in the “response to phil cushway” section, and i do not list the reasoning when i now add previously unknown reprints, i do list the reasoning in thorough detail when i change the listing on originals. when i changed the listing for bg-2, the batman poster, i included four pages of text explaining the history of the scholarship on the batman poster and why i was changing the listing. i agree that this type of information is vital when it is necessary for me to say that what i had thought was an original is a reprint. look, for example, at the lengthy text on how and why i changed the original/reprint status on fd-61 in 2003 or the change in fd-68 which i made based on evidence you supplied to me. the only exception to this is the change to bg-21 when i listed only “in 2005 while doing research in the inventory of wolfgangsvault, i discovered conclusive evidence that the poster formerly identified as bg-21-op-1 was actually an early reprint.” i did not give the specific evidence because it was proprietary business information dealing with quantities in inventory. suffice it to say that there were too many in inventory of that item for it to have been an original because bill graham was not saving that many copies of originals that early. i am sure that as a business man yourself you will agree that the exact quantities in the inventory owned by wolfgangsvault is no ones business but theirs.

there are several other page long essays in my book explaining why something was changed or something which i disputed with jacaeber was still, in my opinion, correct. i believe in documenting changes in originals. i just do not think it is necessary to explain at great length why i added fd-1-rp-3 to the guide as a result of a woman sending me a copy of a version i had not seen before. the brief text along with that entry was, i believe, adequate. i suppose i could have added that i know that fd-1-rp-3 comes later than fd-1-rp-2 and not earlier because i know that the family dog was located at 1725 washington street first and later moved to 639 gough street, not the other way around, but i felt that these are reprints and i did not want to take up a lot more space with that sort of information every time it comes up.

the last paragraph of your post is:

One last point here. We are looking at xerox copies of the Family Dog printing records. Does anyone know where the originals are? We have also have not done a spreadsheet of the records we do have. My initial sense just glancing through them is that there are incomplete. They are also only invoices and not the original printing docket, which might reveal more. Also some of the dockets list a re-run but do not state which poster(s).

i do not know where the originals or the yellow carbons are. all i have are photocopies like yours although i apparently have a more extensive set of them.
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pjposters3
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Fri Feb 01, 2008 9:56 am

Wow. I just read this whole thread and it's full of good information. But as someone said it makes me even more nervous about collecting 60's stuff.

The only other thing I know is I wish Eric would have dedicated his life to cancer research or something of the sort because I have a feeling it would be cured by now.
therose7
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Fri Feb 01, 2008 11:58 am

i am very moved by your kind words, pjposters3. thank you.

there has not been much added to this site in quite a while, but i have had an opportunity to do some very significant research in the last two months. a fellow in michigan was going through the estate of his late step father who had been an executive of kama sutra records. he found a cardboard package containing twenty posters, one of each of the posters listed on the kama sutra records reprinting receipt from california litho plate. the package was printed with a family dog type logo with "kama sutra receords" added. apparently this was how the kama sutra records reprints were distributed to record stores across america.

i acquired this treasure trove of reprint information and then spent a week comparing them to the reprints which were distributed in the san francisco bay area which came from the family dog inventory copies of which i acquired from ben friedman's postermat in the early 1970s. then i spent several days working with grant at wolfgangsvault comparing these reprints to copies in their inventory.

the kama sutra records reprinting receipt from california litho plate dated 10/9/1967 lists the following family dog numbers: 1, 3, 5, 14, 17, 21, 26, 28, 29, 30, 33, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 50, 54, 56, 60. i have posted on my site under the corrections and additions section an explanation of how to distinguish those of the kama sutra reprints which can be distinguished from the previously known family dog reprints. it appears that several of these kama sutra records reprints which were printed in press runs of 5,000 were part of longer 10,000 press runs half of which went to the family dog inventory. the main evidence for this is that they are not only on exactly the same stock and of identical dimensions, but they have common printing zits. if the printings were not continuous, it would be reasonable to assume that even a sloppy printer would have cleaned the plate before a new printing began days or weeks later.

the ones where the reprints are recognizeably different are described clearly on my website. the most important thing for me to point out here is that these reprints have forced me to define more narrowly the definitions and characteristics of originals for fd-43 and fd-56. i strongly urge anyone who is buying, trading or selling a copy of one of these two originals to look at my site for the latest information. in these two cases there are essays explaining the reasoning behind these changes. as i have said elsewhere, i take changes in descriptions of originals extremely seriously, and i believe along with phil that when i make changes in these descriptions that i have to explain them.

the 8th edition of my guide is currently out of print. i sold the last copy in december. the 9th edition which will include all this new material on the family dog kama sutra reprints as well as the new material generated by phil's posting of new information on this site. it should be back from the printer in about a month to six weeks. please check my site for updates.

i have also come to one unfortunate conclusion, that we may never know how to tell the reprint from the original of bg-97. phil's records show it was reprinted. he may or may not have an envelope with a reprint in it, but we do know that typically several hundred copies of these bill graham reprints were shipped to bill graham in san francisco while most of them went to personality posters in new york. unlike almost any other tea lautrec printing, apparently they changed the paper stock during the press run on either the original or the reprint so that there are in the wolfgangsvault inventory copies of the "grahm" version on three different stocks. one of these must be a reprint, and one must be an original, but what about the third. even if phil has one copy in an envelope labeled "reprint" which came from tea lautrec litho, we probably still will never know what the other two are. did they change the paper stock on the original or on the reprint. as of this point there is no way of knowing.

i do believe i have managed to account for all the other bill graham posters between bg-66 and bg-114 for which phil has tea lautrec litho invoices showing reprinting which was for personality posters in new york, that is, unless there is one for bg-99. here i am not sure what is going on so there may or may not be a reprint. i just do not know.

for those of you who do not know the address of my website, here it is:
<http://home.earthlink.net/~therose7/>
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