THE CARTOONS. Series I-A
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Scope and Contents
The Jay N. Darling collection consists of 60 linear feet of material, organized into nine series. Since this collection is made up of a series of gifts made at different times and arranged according to different schemes, its organization is sometimes complex. A thorough biographical note follows this scope and contents note, as does a list of related materials in other collections.
Series I-A: The Cartoons; Proof copies, clippings, and other reproductions of Darling's cartoons that are held physically by the Libraries are described in this section of the finding aid. Late in his life Darling said that he thought he had drawn 15,000 cartoons for newspapers, magazines, to illustrate books, and even for use in advertisements. These cartoons exist in many forms, ranging from the original 22 x 28 inch ink drawings to pressman's impressions to clippings from newspapers and tear sheets from magazines to photostatic and photographic reproductions. This series also contains lists of Ding's favorite cartoons, lists of cartoons, and "Looking Through the Years With Ding." The Libraries holds some 6000 original drawings; these are now indicated on the metadata records that are part of the digitized cartoons available for searching or browsing at The Editorial Cartoons of J. N. "Ding" Darling. The finding aid also briefly describes cartoons signed by Tom Carlisle, Darling's assistant from 1926 and his successor in 1949.
Series I-B: Other Art Forms; Illustrations for articles, books, advertising; building panels; watercolors; sketches; and etchings. Besides newspaper cartoons, Darling created non-cartoon illustrations for various magazines and products, and he made etchings and watercolors.
Series II: Biographical Materials; Includes biographical essays, photographs, honors and awards, and public service records. For more lengthy pieces on Darling, see the "Writings about Darling" segment of Series III.
Series III: Writings; Writings by Darling ; Writings about Darling; On Cartoons and Cartooning (not by Darling) This series also includes essays and articles about but not by Darling, including materials about cartooning in general.
Series IV: Conservation; includes American Wildlife Institute, Civilian Conservation Council, Clearinghouse for Conservation, conservation education, Council of Conservationists, General Wildlife Federation, Institute for the Restoration of Wildlife, Iowa Natural Resources Council, Izaak Walton League, Jay N. Darling Wildlife Refuge and Society, National Wildlife Federation, Okoboji Lakeside Laboratory, United States Fish and Game Service, and Wildlife Society, among other items.
Series V: Correspondence - this series contains Darling's copious correspondence. The first subseries is in chronological order with each item assigned a number for name and subject cross-indexing. The second subseries has been arranged in alphabetical order by name of correspondent or organization. The final subseries is from Darling's 1925 illness, and is comprised mostly of short cards, often with incomplete signatures. When searching for a correspondent, it is well to remember these three schemes; to conduct a complete search, all three sequences must be examined.
Series VI: Travel photographs and memorabilia from trips the Darlings took, mostly from the early 1920s. Darling and his family traveled extensively.
Series VII: The J. N. "Ding" Darling Foundation. The Jay N. "Ding" Darling Foundation, now defunct though it maintains a web site, has its own series.
Series VIII: Scrapbooks; This series consists of scrapbooks dealing with Darling's family life, travels, conservation, politics and the cat whisker incident (see scrapbook #7 for further details). These scrapbooks contain mostly newspaper clippings, but also cards, programs, and letters. These materials are fragile. Some of the items once pasted down have come unstuck; others were never pasted but merely laid between pages of the scrapbooks. Some of the scrapbooks have a definite scheme, (e.g.,"J. N. Darling for Senator"), but for the most part, there seems to be no unifying theme.
Series IX: Slides (slides are stored in vertical file 1, drawer 4). Darling was an active speaker and sometimes illustrated his lectures with slides.
2002 Addendum; Martha Hyde-Wynn collection of letters, clippings, and ephemera from the Darling-Dennis friendship, including a series of coasters and napkins designed by Darling.
Alphabetical indexes to the cartoons may be found at the Iowa Digital Library entry for Darling. See external documents below for a link.
Dates
- Creation: 1897-1962
- Creation: Majority of material found within 1920-1949
Creator
- From the Collection: Darling, Jay N. (Person)
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open to researchers.
Extent
From the Collection: 60.00 Linear Feet
Language of Materials
From the Collection: English
Materials Specific Details
Series 1A
Scope and Contents
Darling’s cartoons appeared regularly in many newspapers and several periodicals (most notably, from 1910 to 1934 in Collier’s Weekly Magazine). He illustrated a wide range of books, pamphlets, conservation magazines, and even advertising materials. All of this work as represented in the Iowa collection in physical formats is described in this section (I-A) of this inventory. These include clippings, proof copies (on newsprint and on calendared card stock), photostats, and photocopies. All of the material on this list, with the exception of the lists noted in Box 26, have been incorporated in the online web site, The Editorial Cartoons of Jay N. "Ding" Darling.
While Darling was primarily a cartoonist, he created art in a number of other media as well – among them pencil and ink sketches, water colors, and etchings. Items in these varied formats are described in "Other Art Forms", Section I-B of this inventory.
Original Drawings
Darling’s cartoons typically originated as inked images on 22 x 28 inch card stock. The University of Iowa Libraries holds some 6,000 of these original drawings, as they were Darling’s gift to the University just after his retirement from the Des Moines Register. The original drawings have been arranged alphabetically by title in folders stored in Map Cases 4 to 11, Drawers 4 to 150. Filed alongside these original drawings are a collection of photostats of cartoons and large scale photographic prints of cartoons on glossy paper, panel cartoons intended to be mounted on buildings, as well as uncaptioned oversized illustrations. The locations of these items are indicated at the end of this inventory.
Proof Copies
When Darling finished a drawing, it was taken to the newspaper production room where the staff produced from it, by photographic means, the printing plates required to fit it into daily newspaper page layouts. Darling’s cartoons typically appeared in the center of the front page, just under the masthead. The printing plates were routinely proofed, and several copies of the proofs might be preserved. The largest collection of proofs appears to be held by the Cowles Library at Drake University – about 6800 cartoons -- the earliest dating to 1907, although that collection becomes relatively full only after 1916 (perhaps because it was at this point that Darling’s work was syndicated through the New York Herald Tribune). The Iowa collection also contains many hundreds of proof sheets, primarily from the 1930s and 1940s.
Clippings
Finally, once the newspaper was published, one or several copies of the edition might be sacrificed to provide clippings, at least one copy of which Darling (or a member of his family) seems to have retained, more or less systematically, from the beginning of his career, just after 1900 at the Sioux City Journal, through about 1915.
The sequence of newspaper cartoons is being recreated, in full, as an on-line data base, The Editorial Cartoons of J. N. (‘Ding’) Darling. The Cowles collection was scanned in 1999 by Christopher "Kip" Koss, who then crafted metadata to accompany the images and brought his work together on a CD which remains available from the “Ding” Darling Wildlife Foundation. About 1700 original drawings in the Iowa collections -- thought not to be represented in the Cowles collection -- were also scanned in 1999-2000. When these scans of the Cowles and Iowa collections were brought together in a CONTENTdm database in the fall of 2006, the metadata for the Iowa cartoons was drawn from a card catalog created in the 1960s. In a matter of weeks, this produced a database of some 8500 cartoons. About 300 duplicate records were later identified and metadata merged.
In December 2006, the early clippings and proof copies at Iowa were scanned and CONTENTdm records created by entering dates, caption titles, and text contained in the cartoon itself. This base record provided at least some searchable access points as more complete metadata was added. The large number of Collier’s cartoons represented by proof and tear sheets were also scanned, and as time and staff resources permited, additional cartoons from varied sources were added. Microfilms of the Sioux City Journal (1900-1906), the Des Moines Register & Leader (1906-1910 and 1912-1949), and the New York Globe (1911-1913) will be systematically reviewed to recapture cartoons not caught by other means.
Proof copies, clippings, and photocopies are boxed in chronological order.
Repository Details
Part of the University of Iowa Special Collections Repository
Special Collections Department
University of Iowa Libraries
Iowa City IA 52242 IaU
319-335-5921
319-335-5900 (Fax)
lib-spec@uiowa.edu