by BK Munn
Most fans of the tiny fantasy worlds glimpsed through the lens of a View-Master viewer are probably unaware of the name Florence Thomas. Thomas was the Portland, Oregon sculptor employed by the makers of the 3-D viewer to create miniature dioramas of fairy tales and pop culture scenes which she then photographed for reproduction into the iconic circular white reels that have delighted children and adult collectors for decades.
Thomas produced her first reels for View-Master in 1946 --a series of Fairy Tales and Mother Goose rhymes that are still in circulation. According to one source, Thomas "developed special methods of close-up stereo photography and modeling which is now in common use by major motion picture studios" (John Waldsmith, Stereo Views, 1991). She created scenes of such detail and attractiveness that you feel you could step inside and look around a corner at a complete world. Besides the Fairy Tales, these worlds included versions of the Frankenstein and Dracula stories, scenes from the comic strip Peanuts, and 3-D versions of animated cartoons like The Flintstones. Amazingly, all of the puppet-like figures were sculpted from clay and the scenes were shot using a single-lens camera (not a stereo camera) that was moved on a track to get the stereo shot. Sometimes the models were moved slightly between shots to enhance the 3-D effect. During her heyday, Thomas appeared on television and radio to satisfy the curiosity of the children who consumed View-Masters by the millions in the 1950s and 60s. Today, she is largely forgotten except for a few collectors. You can see her at work (in 3-D, of course!) on this collector's reel. A tv appearance is available on this dvd.
Thomas trained a successor, Joe Liptak, seen below shooting a scene from the Disney Robin Hood set. The work of these two geniuses, lovingly crafted three-dimensional stories, live on in the creations of artists like Vladimir, recently profiled in The Believer magazine.
What a great article! I will never forget the joy of playing with my Viewmaster as a kid. It was always an escape.
ReplyDeleteThis stuff is exquisite! And thanks for answering a perplexion for most of my generation--i.e., "who did these lovely dioramas."
ReplyDeleteIf you have ANY information on how these things were put together, the scale sizes, the fate of the dioramas, the lenses used, please, please email me at gilcreature@gmail.com. Thanks!!
That's all I know!
ReplyDeleteMy hat is off to this amazing woman and what she achieved! It's so cool to see how far 3D imagery has come since the Viewmaster. It used to be a concept reserved only for pictures, but we've got entire movies in 3D these days. The Viewmaster was in almost every household in the advent of its popularity, and now we've got 3D movies on Blu-Ray. And to think it all started with a small toy that resembled a pair of binoculars!
ReplyDeleteAre these model scenes still around?
ReplyDeleteYes my uncle has some .Florence Thomas was my great aunt my mothers father sister.my aunt Florence even made view master slides of my sisters and I as babys.i remember as a kid going to her house seeing all those figurines she had made. my favorite one was puss and boot
DeleteI don't remember alot of that because I was real young I just remember going to her house and having lots of candy, and her big white pursion cat who I loved to cuddle.
DeleteThat is not Joe Liptak in the picture as Identified...I know because he was my godfather...he created the miniatures for photos , just as Florence did...it was delightful, as a kid, to visit his studio and see all the characters we were familiar with lining the shelves ...
ReplyDeleteFlorence Thomas was my wife's aunt. We have only a few items of her work, that we receive after her death and the death of her sister. If there are any remaining examples of her work available, her family would like very much to recover them for their family collection. Any information would be welcome, thank you.
ReplyDeleteI'm sorry Florence Thomas did not have a sister just a brother which was my grandpa sister, it was just the two of them !
DeleteI would so much like to know more about this extraordinary woman's life and her life's work. Did she only have one successor? She should have been teaching classrooms full of people her craft. Why is there so little information about her and Joe Liptak?
ReplyDeleteThe photographer in the image is Hank Gaylord not Joe, also Florence did not train Joe Liptak. The artists did not do any of the photography. Story needs a bit more research but has a good start.
ReplyDeletenice, BK. Talk about unsung heroes.
ReplyDeleteand that looks like a Sword in the Stone setup, at least it looks like Merlin and his tea set.
ReplyDeleteOf course all these posts are something like a decade ago, but I urge any of you with info or stories to share, email me at GilcreatGilcreature@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteGilcreature@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteI've enjoyed View-Master since I was a teenager in the early 70s. Back then I was interested in Sc-Fi and TV shows of the era. It's taken me to now, in my mid-50s to truly appreciate the creativity of the clay figure reels. I've been building my collection of them for the past month. There's just something charming and cool about the authenticity of the clay figures that VR doesn't match. Incidentally, I may have an article on my stereo photographs published in the hobby publication, Stereo World in the near future. The photos are of the Genesee Country Village and Museum in Mumford, NY where I used to work as a historic interpreter (1850s). I was inspired by the Colonial Williamsburg reels from the 1960s.
ReplyDeleteIs this the Florence Thomas, Portland sculptor, who made the plaster models for the Newel Posts ( carved wood) in Timberline Lodge, Mt. Hood? P. 23 , Timberline Lodge Guide tour, www.friendsoftimberline.org
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