Fleming Joffe Ltd Spring Summer 1966 [Leather Color Sample Chart]

New York: Produced by Fleming Joffe Levor, 1966. Photolithographic print on card with 220 applied leather samples. 18 x 24 inches. Hanging cord at head. Some marginal soiling and toning, some fading of leather samples. Very good. Photolithographic print on card with 220 applied leather samples. 18 x 24 inches. Uncommon example of Andy Warhol’s continuing involvement with commercial art. He began designing lettering and promotional pieces for New York leather merchants Fleming Joffe in 1958, including awning designs, color promotions, and conceptual sketches. Fleming Joffe were known for their use of dyed reptile skins; this is a color chart, displaying samples of available leathers in 22 colors and 13 varieties of materials and treatments, with the names lettered by Warhol in his characteristic scrawling interpretation of a modern copperplate in imitation of his mother’s handwriting, seen in 25 Cats Named Sam (1954), in his advertising work of the 1950s, and The Wonderful World of Fleming Joffe (1960).
The color names include Naked Pink, Filly Brown, Mexicali Rose, Sailor Boy, No Beige, and others. The varieties of material and processes, with names equally whimsical, include Sweet Kid, Cobra, Shetland Vealer, Makassar, Shetland Kid Suede, Calcutta, Smoothie Kid, Dream Calf, Alligator Lizard, Dragon Lizard, O.U. Kid, and Geometries. The last named variety refers the user to two larger panels with textured samples outside the grid, Sphinx Kid and Disco Kid. A photograph of the Fleming Joffe showroom window from Summer 1965 includes a color chart with a slightly different configuration of names and samples that omits the large Geometries. Cf. “Success is a job in New York”. The Early Art and Business of Andy Warhol (1989), pp. 8-9, 32, 49, 82