Self-inventive “Gofer” Duties — After Heavy Rain.

Above the recep­tion area of Butte, Herrero and Hyde’s second floor studio, there was a small storage space on the roof, with windows for light and shelves for storage. This is where a lot of finished art from past jobs was kept. One very rainy after­noon, when the part­ners had headed out for lunch (was it Venessi’s or New Joe’s or Enrico’s — up the street on Broadway, or lunch with Hal Halber­stadt at ChoCho’s, or the Owl ‘n’ Turtle, or the Iron Pot or Gino’s) — I locked the front door, put a chair on the recep­tion desk and climbed up to push up the trap door in the ceiling. I pulled myself up and into the storage space. As I had guessed, with the heavy rain, there were many areas getting wet.

I moved a lot of illus­tra­tions that were still dry. The water seemed to flow down estab­lished chan­nels, so when I left, every­thing was in a dry loca­tion. By the time BH&H had returned, I was back at my drawing board and they never knew that I protected (maybe what they no longer even wanted).

SHELL

When I was there, the part­ners had a yearly produc­tion — the Shell Chem­ical Calendar.

Shell Chemical’s office was in San Fran­cisco. When it was time for the calendar to move through the studio, there was much activity. Confer­ences were many on the style and details of the new calendar. One of the little addi­tions — barely notice­able — was the graphic deco­ra­tion that was added on each of the special days of the month. These were authentic images taken from flour sacks of the past — so plen­tiful in early Amer­ican bulk supplies of flour. Each image was sized and muted, so they were seen on the date — but still subtle. Phases of the moon were styled and placed. The refer­ence for the dates of the moon’s changes came from the predic­tion records that I picked up at the US Federal Building at 30 Sansome Street.

My special assign­ment at the last phase, close to the dead­line for all to be completed, was answering the phone calls from Shell’s David Davies. I was to tell him that he could not see the ongoing devel­op­ment of the paint­ings — and that Lowell was at his cabin in the Sierras and would deliver the finished art when it was completed.

Ann Thompson

Click on an image for a larger view and the collection.

Shell Calender Cover 1965 

Shell Calender Inside Front Cover 1965 

Shell Calender January 1965 

Shell Calender February 1965 

Shell Calender March 1965 

Shell Calender April 1965 

Shell Calender May 1965 

Shell Calender June 1965 

Shell Calender July 1965 

Shell Calender August 1965 

Shell Calender September 1965 

Shell Calender October 1965 

Shell Calender November 1965 

Shell Calender December 1965