PBA Galleries

Four items include two books on post-war China, one on American post-war housing, and a rare bi-lingual personal greeting card

The best-known Chinese-American watercolor artist in San Francisco in the 1960s, Kingman was born in Oakland, received his art education in China and California and was already exhibiting in the 1930s, while employed by the WPA. A prolific artist of original paintings and commercial illustrations, apart from the books of his own art published much later, Kingman did few book illustrations; these imprints are three of the first five, plus a rare item of personal ephemera

• Vanya Oakes. The Bamboo Gate. Stories of Children of Modern China. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1946) First Printing. Original cloth. Dust Jacket, frontispiece and chapter headers by Kingman. Very good.
• Enid LaMonte Meadowcroft. China’s Story (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1946) Original cloth. Pictorial Dust Jacket. Though Weda Yap and Georgi Helms are credited with the maps and some illustrations, Kingman probably illustrated the Dust Jacket, frontispiece and 17 full-page drawings. DJ price clipped; very good.
• Frederick Gutheim. Houses For Family Living. (Nwe York: Womans Foundation, 1948) Original printed wrappers. Numerous textual drawings by Kingman. Soiling along spine; very good.
• Printed folding 1954 new year’s greeting card, with black illustrations, Chinese characters and text on red paper, 9 x 14” unfolded. Text is informal family and personal news: “sgt.eddie (older son) will be out of marines 1958. Jr. enjoys studying at Williston. Janice (cooking) is doing fine…Me? wong-howe shot me (a movie short) I become a famous artist school faculty member….Very happy new year, eddie, Janice, don and dong kingman”.  Original mailing envelope, postmarked Brooklyn, Jan. 1954. Near fine.