Eustace Tilley Cufflinks Of Interest
From Attempted Bloggery, September 23, 2025, “Eustace Tilley New Yorker Cuffllnks”
Stephen Nadler, the fellow behind the Attempted Bloggery curtain, takes a look at these interesting, and somewhat mysterious pieces (the set above are part of the Spill archives). “Mysterious” because there seems to be, at the moment, only one other known pair (offered and sold, sometime back, on a website, Ruby Lane…they’re now pictured on Attempted Bloggery). Mysterious too because it’s unknown who made the cufflinks, where they were made, and when (I’ll leave out the “why”).
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Applause, once again, for Rea Irvin, the artist who was responsible for giving us the ever wonderful Eustace Tilley (the drawing, not the name. Corey Ford did the dubbing). Here’s the Spill’s Irvin A-Z entry:
Rea Irvin (pictured above. Self portrait above from Meet the Artist) Born, San Francisco, 1881; died in the Virgin Islands,1972. Irvin was the cover artist for the New Yorker’s first issue, February 21, 1925. He was the magazine’s first art and only art supervisor (some refer to him as its first art editor) holding the position from 1925 until 1939 when James Geraghty assumed the title of art editor. Irvin then became art director and remained in that position until William Shawn officially succeeded Harold Ross in early 1952. Irvin’s last original work for the magazine was the magazine’s cover of July 12, 1958. The February 21, 1925 Eustace Tilley cover had been reproduced every year on the magazine’s anniversary until 1994, when R. Crumb’s Tilley-inspired cover appeared. Tilley has since reappeared, with other artists substituting from time-to-time. Number of New Yorker covers (not including the repeat appearances of the first cover every anniversary up to 1991): 179. Number of cartoons contributed: 261.
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