Blossoms of Youth: A Collector's Guide to J. Knowles Hare

By Norman I. Platnick

Enchantment Ink is pleased to introduce the 12th volume in its series of full-color guides to American illustrators, "Blossoms of Youth: A Collector's Guide to J. Knowles Hare" by Norm Platnick. Eight years in the making, this new volume brings together everything known about Hare's printed works, including full-color images of all his known calendars and prints, along with the magazine items (covers, illustrations, and ads), store displays, catalogs, sheet music, programs, book illustrations, fans, blotters, postcards, trade cards, bridge tallies, needle cases, and boxes featuring his work. The volume includes biographical information and over 900 images on 129 8.5x11 inch, velo-bound pages, plus a detailed, 16-page index/size & 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

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