Too Much Information - Part 2

More current activity in the Florasphere (see Part 1 here):

We're preparing several new fine art prints for release, including a Mambo For Cats giclée (the oversized screen print sold out last year, but the Mambo mini remains available). Above is a mockup of a proposed print that might make it into 2013's release queue.

Our Tokyo-based Floraphile friend Takashi Okada has compiled and designed The Raymond Scott Songbook, a magnificent two-CD set of vintage and rare Scott recordings from the 1930s to the 1960s. The package includes a 100-page booklet featuring a number of Flora spot illos from the 1940s and '50s, which we provided for Takashi's use.

Three full Flora works from the 1940s (Fletcher Henderson, 1942, pictured above) are being used as set dressing on the forthcoming Showtime TV series Masters of Sex. The series takes place in the 1950s, and portrays the lives and work of sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson. The series debuts in September.

An untitled early 1950s Flora black & white tableau has been edited and vibrantly colorized for a forthcoming album, Raymond Scott Rewired, to be released in September on the Basta label. The album features the entire Raymond Scott music catalog—from 1930s jazz novelties to 1960s electronic experiments with Scott's homemade instruments—remixed, mashed, and flipped by three expert audio hooligans: The Bran Flakes, The Evolution Control Committee, and Go Home Productions. You can hear three samples from the album here.

Flora, Raymond and Takashi

We received a photo of this festive tableau from our good friend (and devoted Floraphile) in Japan, Takashi Okada. The greeting card, a vintage artifact ca. 1944, was purchased by Takashi from the Flora collection a few years ago.

Behind the card sits a demo of Takashi's forthcoming Raymond Scott Songbook, a 2-cd collection of rare Scott archival recordings and new cover versions by a variety of artists. Positioned to the right is a figurine of Raymond Scott, manufactured by PressPop of Japan in commemoration of the Scott centennial in 2008.

a little Flora brightens a room

To many who know him, our friend Takashi Okada of Tokyo is a talented graphic designer, music producer, historian, cultural connoisseur, cat lover, and gentleman. But unless you visit Takashi and his wife Tomoko's home, you might not know he has a deep Flora fixation. Takashi owns original art, album covers, Little Man Press artifacts, children's books, and fine art prints. We've long known about Takashi's love of Flora, but never having visited the Far East, we hadn't seen the shrine. The above photo was sent by our Japanese friend.

Flora as interior decor

Akiko Hashimoto sends this snapshot from her home in Japan:

The Flora prints displayed are The Big Bank Robbery (ca. 1963) and Gunfight on the Roof (ca. 1951). A series of original 1950s Flora LPs sits on a shelf below.

Iz pussyfootin on ur Floraz, hiping new boook

Takashi Okada of Tokyo alerts us that volume 2 of his kitty-themed LP sleeve anthologies will be published imminently. The cover (above) features — well, it doesn't quite feature Flora's Mambo For Cats, but the artwork does play a "supporting role." The photographer is apparently distracting the cover model with a cheezburger.

猫ジャケ 素晴らしきネコードの世界

Japanese TV stars use odd commodities for dislodging food particles.

Daisy Holiday

Our friend Takashi Okada of Tokyo has become the pre-eminent Floraphile in Japan. Besides being an avid customer of Jim Flora fine art prints, Takashi recently designed the Daisy Holiday CD package, which adapts Flora's 1947 Green Mansions resort brochure illustration (licensed from the Flora estate). Additional Flora elements appear on the jewel case inlay and in the booklet.

Here's a Tokyo record store display flush with Flora. If you don't live in that part of the world, the CD is available from Amazon, cdUniverse, and YesAsia. When this display is taken down, someone is gonna have a rare Flora Daisy Holiday poster.

Takashi is also publishing a compendium of over 150 feline images from record album covers. The book's front will be adorned with Flora's classic 1955 Mambo For Cats RCA Victor LP illustration, and the back will feature a piano-perched kitty from the Shorty Rogers-Andre Previn Collaboration EP. We'll provide more info about the book upon publication.