The Prism: A Little Magazine with a Big Mission (41 Issues, 1928-1932)
- Burbank: A.C. Fillbach, 1932
Burbank: A.C. Fillbach, 1932. Very Good. Burbank: A.C. Fillbach, 1928-1932. Small octavos (17 x 12.5cm); 16pp. Side-stapled paper wraps. Forty-one issues, missing nine in an otherwise consecutive run. Covers cleanly separated from first issue but present, with a few issues showing clean tears along spines and a few with shallow chips or tears at edges, many with light general toning or smudging. Select paragraphs excised from pages in ten or so issues (a few of these clipped by the prior owner remain loosely within); pages throughout occasionally toned with marginal checks or brackets in pencil and a few dogears. Missing issues are July - November 1929, March 1931, and April - July 1932.
Promotional magazine produced for use by funeral homes, here “published by” A.C. Fillbach, whose Burbank funeral home opened in 1919, though we have also found scattered examples of The Prism dated between 1923 up to 1951 appearing as published by other mortuary firms: T.B. Olroyd & Sons (Arkansas City), Fort Worth Undertaking Co., Charles B. Cook (Austin), Hallet & Hallet, Inc (Long Island / Flushing), and Clarence C. Cooper (Oakland). While the overall contents remained uniform, the magazine appears to have been customizable by the larger publisher to fit the firm subscribing — cover designs of the other examples we found vary in style, featuring their company’s name on front cover and their small advert inside, with the mortician’s vignette portrait swapped out on the first page. Our Fillbach run begins in June 1928 with Vol. I, Number I, though earlier issues for other mortuaries show later numbering, suggesting the volume numbering would begin fresh when your mortuary subscribed.
The tagline for all is “A Little Magazine with a Big Mission,” though this mission is never stated. The contents throughout are comprised of light, inspirational or humorous waiting-room style anecdotes and bits of casual trivia, a section of one-liner aphorisms and jokes tagged “Prismatic Paragraphs,” and usually a poem on each side of the rear cover. The 1931 issues here each feature seasonal cover vignettes — a menorah for January, a child precariously lighting a firecracker for July, a turkey beneath a dangling ax for November. We have unfortunately not managed to identify the larger publisher or editors responsible for providing the magazine to the broader mortuary community.
None found in OCLC, though it seems to have missed the three T.B. Olroyd & Sons copies at Pittsburg State University, with a handful of single issues by other undertaking firms here and there in past online auction records or in the trade.
Promotional magazine produced for use by funeral homes, here “published by” A.C. Fillbach, whose Burbank funeral home opened in 1919, though we have also found scattered examples of The Prism dated between 1923 up to 1951 appearing as published by other mortuary firms: T.B. Olroyd & Sons (Arkansas City), Fort Worth Undertaking Co., Charles B. Cook (Austin), Hallet & Hallet, Inc (Long Island / Flushing), and Clarence C. Cooper (Oakland). While the overall contents remained uniform, the magazine appears to have been customizable by the larger publisher to fit the firm subscribing — cover designs of the other examples we found vary in style, featuring their company’s name on front cover and their small advert inside, with the mortician’s vignette portrait swapped out on the first page. Our Fillbach run begins in June 1928 with Vol. I, Number I, though earlier issues for other mortuaries show later numbering, suggesting the volume numbering would begin fresh when your mortuary subscribed.
The tagline for all is “A Little Magazine with a Big Mission,” though this mission is never stated. The contents throughout are comprised of light, inspirational or humorous waiting-room style anecdotes and bits of casual trivia, a section of one-liner aphorisms and jokes tagged “Prismatic Paragraphs,” and usually a poem on each side of the rear cover. The 1931 issues here each feature seasonal cover vignettes — a menorah for January, a child precariously lighting a firecracker for July, a turkey beneath a dangling ax for November. We have unfortunately not managed to identify the larger publisher or editors responsible for providing the magazine to the broader mortuary community.
None found in OCLC, though it seems to have missed the three T.B. Olroyd & Sons copies at Pittsburg State University, with a handful of single issues by other undertaking firms here and there in past online auction records or in the trade.