Heading: (African American - 1924-1934 “Jazz Age” Art Deco Black caricatures)
Author:
Title: Five small items featuring "Jazz Age" Art Deco Black caricatures
Place Published:
Publisher:
Date Published: 1924-1934
Description:

Includes:

• 
  German color postcard showing three Black men playing instruments 5½x3½". B.Dondorf, Frankfurt, Germany, postally used on verso [stamp removed] in Ukraine, with handwritten date 1924.


• 
  3 individual playing cards (1 mounted in a modern Deco mat) 3½x2¼", probably American, all with color Art Deco images, 2 having minstrel themes, 1 with Black cocktail waiters (no imprints, ca. 1930).


• 
  Bertelli Italian perfume company, “Kalendario Jazz Band”, small souvenir calendar with original tie, 3½x2¾", 6  pages depicting highly stylized Deco images of Black women playing instruments. Barbarino, Genoa, 1934.

While all of these images have racist elements – the German postcard, in particular, shows exaggerated “Negro” features and earrings reminiscent of African natives – they represent a transition from intentionally derogatory Black images of the 19th century, the musical associations being prelude to the outright admiration of many white Americans for Black jazz musicians in later Depression years. The Italian Mussolini-era calendar is not only artistically striking but scarce, the Deco images being a radical departure from the more traditional art used in Bertelli calendars issued annually between the World Wars.

Fine or nearly so.