The Ever-Amusing Double Blook

You must have guessed by now that I'm easily amused. One category of blooks that fill me with delight are the double blooks. By that I mean a complex object that is a book-like container which encloses one or more book-shaped objects. They are normally package designs created by companies as novelty items throughout the 20th century, as in the example below.

This Book of Perfume is a premium of Weather-Bird Shoes. I imaging that it must have been marketed through novelty catalogs and could have been printed with the name and logo of any business. It is one of many book-boxes that contain perfume, although it is unusual (but not unique) in the fact that both the bottle and package are book-shaped. As a bookbinder, I find it amusing because it depicts two very different styles of binding. The glass perfume bottle is emulating a fine binding, the type of binding that would have been bound with raised cords, full-leather and gold tooling. In contrast, the modest paper package, is a classic half-leather trade binding, the type of book that people in my experience most associate with a 'real' book.  

Book of Perfume
American, c. 1930
Probably manufactured by Cardinal Perfumes
Dubansky Collection

Punny Blooks with a Dusty Theme

I suppose that the last post made me think of blooks with funny titles. Nothing pleases me more when I'm a little down than looking at my blook collection. Those with silly titles crack me up every time. Even thinking about them makes me smile. They aren't valuable antiques, beautiful objects or important historic artifacts, in fact if they were real books, they would fall under the practical how-to, pulp fiction and humor subject categories. They may be humble, but anything that makes us laugh should not be underestimated.

Not So Dusty, by Y. B. Untidy is a diminutive clothing brush in book form, probably for keeping in one's pocket or purse. I don't know if it's American, Canadian or English, or exactly what date it is. It is hand-painted and for some time, I thought it was a unique object, until I saw another one, so it must be the product of a a cottage industry or, perhaps these were commercially available and someone of artistic bent had the idea to add value and resell them. In any case, it's funny, isn't it?

Crime Does Not Pay, by Dusty Evsky is a novelty 'punchline' book from the late 1940s. Humorous, slightly raunchy blooks like these were made in the thousands and sold as souvenirs throughout the U.S. Their purpose was to lift the morale of guys in the armed services.