Fridays at Auction Finds is readers’ questions day. I try to guide readers to resources to help them determine the value of their items. Today, I have a mystery of my own about a dozen upside-down pages in a July 1939 copy of Fortune magazine’s NY World’s Fair edition.
I didn’t buy the magazine for those pages. I bought it because I’m always on the lookout for artifacts or ephemera pertaining to the fair, which chose as its theme “The World of Tomorrow.” I’m especially interested in anything relating to “The Harp,” African American sculptor Augusta Savage’s contribution to the event. The sculpture, which features a singing choir, was inspired by the song “Lift Every Voice and Sing” by brothers James Weldon and J. Rosamond Johnson.
A couple years ago, I came across a photo of Savage’s sculpture in a French art magazine published during the time of the fair. So I wondered if this edition of Fortune magazine on the auction table in front of me would make note of it, too.
I delicately turned the pages of the 75-year-old magazine, careful not to tear any of them. I saw that the magazine was not necessarily about the fair itself. The theme was the city of New York – its people, its lifestyle and its neighborhoods.
I wondered if this issue – produced at a time when African Americans were treated as invisible or caricatures in most printed media – would include Harlem. So I thumbed the pages in rapid succession but slowly, looking for faces of black people. And there they were. Fortune had indeed written about Harlem and photographed the people who called it home.
My curiosity satisfied, I started examining other pages in the magazine, noting the large still-intact map of the fair site in Queens, and page after page of black and white and color photographs and illustrations, and ads for everything from cars to cigarettes. Just beyond the map, I noticed something unusual.
It was a photograph of women dancers in costumes, but their feet were up and their heads were down. The page had been printed upside down. So was the page opposite it with the accompanying story and the title “Girls, Girls, Girls, Girls, Girls.” This story about dancers on Broadway was one of 12 inverted pages smack in the center of the magazine.
Was this intentional? I suspected that it was not because it didn’t make any sense. Sometimes publications invert a section at the back of the book, forcing you to flip it, but not in the middle.
I wondered, though, if there were other copies of the magazine like it. I found a complete digital copy of the July 1939 issue on the web, and the pages corresponded to mine. All of its pages, though, were right side up. I found other copies for sale on retail websites and eBay, but none of the sellers mentioned inverted pages.
I can only assume that my copy was mistakenly constructed during printing. I wonder how many of these mistakes were sold.
What do you think? Have you ever come across a similar copy?
