Pages

Friday, October 15, 2010

Guerrieri Cartoon, circa 1925

Photobucket

We moved into our old Victorian house April 2008. Only a few weeks ago, I started unpacking three closets of boxes. My mission was to select at least 50 items in the boxes to a) give to charity or b) give to a friend, or c)throw in the trash. My friend Pam was there to guide me (push me) to get rid of things--especially things I haven't looked at for decades. I got rid of two car loads of items.

Among the boxes I found a cardboard tube containing this original cartoon by Guerrieri. I inherited the cartoon from my great uncle Herman Cooksey 30 years ago. Herman was born in Chicago 1909. He was a bachelor all his life. I met Herman for the first time after his sister Eva passed away in 1973. Eva was my grandmother.

If you look at the cartoon closely, you can see corners of old banknotes tucked at the corners of the cartoon. Yes, real currency! But only corners of real currency. Dang.

There is no title. But I call it, "Where the Money Went". What would you call it? I'm not sure what the halo means.

As I understand it, Herman had lots of jobs in his lifetime. He worked at the Cook County Jail, and he cleaned apartments and buildings in Chicago to make extra money. Many of the things we inherited from Uncle Herman were items he was given, or leftover items he picked up from vacated apartments he cleaned.

I've been doing some search on the internet to find Guerrieri, the cartoonist. Nothing, so far. Now, I'm including searches of people with the last name Guerrieri. I'm hoping somehow, somewhere, someone may have information about Guerrieri the artist. Do you have any clues?

A special thank you to Lana Giacalone, Wilderness Custom Framing, Waupaca WI. You did a beautiful job of framing the Guerrieri cartoon. I love it!

Sorry about the glare on the photo. I should have photographed it before I had it framed recently.

Mrs. D