All Is Vanity: A Collector’s Guide to C. Allan Gilbert

By Norman I. Platnick

Enchantment Ink is pleased to introduce the 23rd volume in our series of full-color guides to American illustrators, All Is Vanity: A Collector's Guide to C. Allan Gilbert, by Norman I. Platnick. Fifteen years in the making, this new volume attempts to bring together all of Gilbert’s published works. The book includes a biography and full-color images of his magazine covers, illustrations, and ads, along with his books, book illustrations, sheet music, brochures, catalogs, postcards, blotters, fans, Christmas cards, boxes, and advertising displays, as well as his many print and calendar images. The volume features over 700 images on 128 8.5x11 pages, and includes a detailed index and price guide.

Click here to download this guide, for free.

A note from William Platnick

Hello Enchantment Ink visitor. On April 8th, 2020, the author of all these books, my father, Norman Platnick, died of complications due to a serious fall.

Words cannot describe the amount of pain my family is in right now. My father was a wonderful, humble, loving, passionate and intelligent man. He had 3 passions in life: my mother, spiders and collecting.

As a way of honoring my father's legacy in the illustrated artwork community, I will be turning as many books of his as possible into PDF files and distributing them online, for free.

If you have found these collector's guides useful, I ask that you make a donation to the Norman I. Platnick Memorial Fund, which will be setting up a scholarship in the field of arachnology, my father's career.

If you'd like to learn more about my father and his amazing life (such as skipping middle school and high school and going to college when he was 12), I'd like to lift up just a few pieces:

NY Times: Norman Platnick Obituary
Concord University Magazine Fall 2018: Friendly Neighbordhood Arachnologist page 20
NY Times: The Exciting Adventures of Spider Man
Daily News: NYC'S real-life spider man
NY Times: For Some, an Appliance; for Others, Art
The Wall Street Journal: Warming Up to Spiders

All HTML and graphics (not those of illustrators) involved in the layout of the site are copyrighted by Enchantment Ink.