1966 TOPPS EDDIE BRESSOUD ORIGINAL ART

When I was a kid, my friend’s dad had LeRoy Neiman lithographs lining the corked walls of his study.

Sometimes I’d press my nose against a picture frame and examine the angles and arcades of the penciled signature along the white border.

I haven’t acquired much original art of my own as an adult. I make due with the Klee wallpaper on my work PC and the Klimt skin on my iPhone.

But I do have this one anonymous treasure: the original ink artwork for the cartoon that was reproduced on the reverse of Eddie Bressoud‘s 1966 Topps card.

The canvas here is basically an elongated index card, and it is stained with remnants of the paste-up process. The name “BRESSOUD” is written lightly in non-repro blue along the bottom.

The Bressoud card was number 516 in that year’s series, and this same number is inked on an angle between the dejected pitcher and the caption text.

I once thought that this was a post-production addition, perhaps inserted for indexing purposes. But I’ve grown to suspect that it was probably part of the original drawing, placed there to help ensure that the artwork ended up on the correct card back.

I imagine that the number was removed when the cartoon was reproduced, and this is supported by a small dash-dot sequence that appears between the pitcher and the 516 on the original. This bit of Morse code, meant to represent the base path, does not appear on the printed card back, and was likely masked out along with the number during production.

The cartoon is a slight, monochromatic thing, but I’ll take it over a garish Neiman print any day…

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