Here Are Books You Can Judge by Their Covers

Has your neighbor ever shown you his treasured collection of 2,000 matchbooks? Does your brother-in-law have a hoard of vintage girlie ties from the 1940s or garishly patterned Hawaiian shirts that he wears on those truly special occasions? Are your friends into maniacally collecting cow-related objects or whimsical salt-and-pepper shakers?

All of these collectible aspects of Americana, as well as the venerable sports of bowling and miniature golf, are captured for posterity in a handsomely designed series of books from Abbeville Press.

While the series is more celebratory than scholarly, it is the books’ covers that initially grab your eye. “The Hawaiian Shirt: Its Art and History” was first published bound in 11 different Hawaiian shirt fabrics. Now in its third printing, the book offers a selection of four different fabrics.

3 Holes in Bowling Cover

“Bowl-O-Rama: The Visual Arts of Bowling” has three holes bored in the cover, a perfect fit for the more literary-minded bowling fanatic. “Miniature Golf” sports a lush, green Astroturf-like fabric on its cover--lay it down on the floor and do some practice putting. A touchable, pink furry udder embellishes the bovine chomping contentedly on the front of “Wholly Cow,” a book about, well, cow imagery in American culture. “Close Cover Before Striking: The Golden Age of Matchbook Art” looks like a giant, somewhat worn matchbook. Open the book and the second page reveals a row of 6-inch-long matches.

The other two entries in the series--”Vintage Ties of the Forties & Fifties” and “Great Shakes: Salt and Pepper for All Tastes”--feature a multitude of their whimsical subjects on their covers.

“The Hawaiian Shirt” book by H. Thomas Steele started the whole series off in 1984. “When I was 16,” Steele says, “I worked in a vintage-clothing store and I noticed the wide variety of patterns in the Hawaiian shirts that came through, and started photographing them.” Eventually, Steele decided to put together a book of his and other people’s collections. It took him five years to get it all together and another five years to sell it, which was partly due to his insistence that his “labor of love” be published in full color.

Walton Rawls, Abbeville Press senior editor, recalls: “It was a risky idea at the time. Our sales people were against it, but the book sold out almost immediately.”

Abbeville then published “Great Shakes” by Gideon Bosker, which is a visual treasure house of salt-and-pepper shakers whose designs cleverly exploit the idea of paired objects. Seemingly every possible combination--from Laurel and Hardy, a dog and a fire hydrant, Humpty Dumpty and his wall, to an aspirin and a martini--are shown. “All of these collectors are known to each other,” Rawls explained, “and once we start a book, the alarm goes out over the grapevine. Somebody calls up with, ‘Gee, I hope you’re not going to do a book without my so-and-so piece.’ ”

Every Aspect Documented

The next book published, “Bowl-O-Rama,” also was written by Steele. Every possible aspect of bowling is visually documented, including trophies, shirts, patches, balls, graphics and architecture--conjuring up an almost-vanished part of American culture. Half of the material in the book is from the Bowling Museum Hall of Fame in St. Louis. “I saw bowling alleys getting torn down all over the place, and I thought it had to be catalogued or the next generation wouldn’t know what it was all about,” Steele said.

“Close Cover” by Steele, Jim Heimann and Rod Dyer, delves into the crudely printed but imaginatively designed world of matchbook art, which fell into decline after the introduction of the lighter. Particularly striking are the novelty matchbooks that were printed with an image (for example, a row of palm trees against a mountainous skyline) on each individual match. As the book comments, these could be so attractive, they were frequently saved in an unused condition.

For a younger generation accustomed to more subdued neckwear, “Vintage Ties” is definitely a “I can’t believe people actually wore that stuff” book. A poem from a 1946 Kiwanis Club newsletter, reprinted in the text, reads: “The books I read and the life I lead/ are sensible, sane and mild./ I like calm hats and I don’t wear spats,/ but I want my neckties wild!”

And wild they are. Ranging from eye-zapping and sometimes downright ugly abstract designs to neckwear with ‘40s-style pinup girls cleverly hidden in the folds, the ties collected in this book were not for the timid. Who could possibly have worn a tie featuring a glass-beaded and sequin-encrusted horse’s head with a halter made out of gold braid? Would they still admit to it today?

“Miniature Golf” by John Margolies continued the series. Esquire magazine called it “the definitive pictorial history of the game,” although there probably are not too many, if any, other books devoted to this curious and uniquely American sport.

From its origins as “the very last of the goofy fads of the ‘20s” to its full-fledged flowering in the ‘50s, this book covers it all. Full-cover photographs capture a wide variety of imaginative hazards from all over the country--Easter Island heads in Key West, Fla.; a family of gorillas fiercely guarding a hole in Atlantic Beach, N.C.; a pink storybook castle located in Fountain Valley, Calif.

People who hate cows should at all costs stay away from “Wholly Cow,” by Emily Gwathmey, as every page has at least one blank-faced bovine portrayed in ceramic, woodcut, oil, papier-mache and other media.

Cow-fanciers, on the other hand, will find udder delight in this celebration of the “nurturing cow in all her statuesque beauty (who) somehow seems the ultimate foster mother to the human race.” Walt Whitman, Frank Lloyd Wright, D. H. Lawrence, Theodore Roethke, Paul Bowles and other not-so-famous boviniacs all wax poetic in their tributes to what is, after all, only a cow.

“Every time we publish a book,” senior editor Rawls said, “we get a lot of submissions for ideas for books that are very similar to what we just did. We try, however, to do a different kind of thing with each book, instead of repeating ourselves.”

Two new offerings are scheduled to arrive this month. “Cracker Jack Prizes” will document for posterity all of those eagerly awaited goodies that lay hidden at the bottom of a box of caramel-covered popcorn. The cover of the book will feature a movable picture of the Cracker Jack sailor boy and his dog.

Steele’s fourth book for Abbeville, “Lick ‘Em, Stick ‘Em: The Art of the Poster Stamp,” will unearth the lost history of an unusual predecessor to matchbook advertising. Poster stamps were large, ornately designed non-revenue stamps that businesses used to promote themselves in the days before color advertisements in magazines.

Abbeville Press will be promoting itself and the book by including in each copy a glassine envelope containing real poster stamps especially designed for “Lick ‘Em, Stick ‘Em.”

Upcoming books include one on snow globes (“You know, you shake them up and down”), eyeglasses of the 1950s (“We have 3-D glasses, sunglasses and one pair in the shape of the word ZOOM”), ephemera from the Golden Age of travel (1880-1939), and “a book about ugly lamps.” Rawls hastened to correct himself: “Let’s not say that--the book is actually called ‘Turned-On: American Decorative Lamps of the 1950s.’ ”