fig. 44a

Rubber Stamps produced by "Ma Vinci's Reliquery"

Who can create their own Mona Lisa variants? Normally this activity is relegated to school children or accomplished artists. By transferring the image to a rubber stamp the capacity to adjust the amalgam needed for image creation has been made available to anyone. In this, one immediately conjures up the image of Guttenberg -- but applied to the small world of specialized imaging. With the rubber stamp, the ability to produce Mona Lisa creations has been given to the people.

Stamps such as those illustrated here are purchased on a sheet, cut up and mounted on wooden blocks to permit pressing and transfer of the design. People use the resulting images for "original" creations, which may combine colored paper and other craft items. Ma Vinci (aka Robin) has created an entertaining and stimulating web-site from which she sells a variety of images and rubber fonts. She has also compiled several galleries of Mona Lisa creations that customers have contributed. Some of these are influenced by package art, by artists such as Joseph Cornell and by Andy Warhol, to name a few of the unending flow of sources.. They also tend to evoke a 19th-century hand-made "retro" ambiance (perhaps best expressed by the less trendy term "retardataire").

I direct the reader to the galleries of Mona Lisa art that Robin has compiled. This link points to one of several. The image, below, by artist Ava Uy, was taken from one of these galleries. It gives a fair idea of the range of creative energy that these simple images can absorb. Their points of reference naturally gravitate to the art of replication. Here, a sheet of pseudo stamps (called postoids) evoke the images of Mona Lisa that have graced countless philatelic issues. Concurrently, they bring to mind the recent trend of issuing a variety of stamps in sheets -- hoping, at once, to satisfy and ignite the dwindling population of collectors.

On the previous page (MONA43.htm) the illustrative tradition of the Mona Lisa was described as one that helped us look forward into the technological future. With that in mind, it is curious to realize that there is no irony in discovering that the Mona Lisa can be used just as easily to fabricate an impression of the past.

fig. 44c
Mona Lisa "postoid"
Published by éditions MH', Paris, 1997
Gift of Carl and Carol Selkin
Acquired from Vroman's Bookstore, Pasadena, CA

Clearly, the history of Mona Lisa reproduction has been intimately allied to the use and development of "mechanical" reproductions. (See Walter Benjamin). But the penchant to create Mona in miniature, in this context, might, nonetheless, seem surprising. It is this author's presumption that the live of miniaturization is enhanced by the intimacy and presumed privacy implied by the miniature.

As a conveyance of closeness and familiarity, the miniature in art has an ancient history. One only need cite the use during the Renaissance of the miniature to transport the likeness of a beloved person, or the physiognomies of mates for whom a marriage was arranged. Artists were sent great distances to to return with portraits that were veriviably accurate. Personal prayer books and bibles, whether they were prepared for the wealthy or for those of lesser means, tended to contain images and portraits meant for private usage and amusement. Today, people still carry images of friends and family in lockets and wallets. As a personal symbol, therefore one should not find it peculiar that the Mona Lisa was frequently used as a symbol on postage stamps. These images ostensibly served to "stamp" a letter with a personal image (or, better, icon). Even when created for collectors (hence as a strategy for increasing a country's revenue) Mona Lisa stamps were meant to address themselves to the individual. Their scale and relatively low cost helped induce purchasers to acquire increasing numbers of examples. A website devoted to Mona Lisa philately may be seen at this address: http://www.values.ch/Art-Gallery/Leonardo/Mona-Lisa/monalisa.htm  This is the source of the two images shown above.

The rubber stamp recalls the early days of mass printing with primitive woodcuts. As early as the 14th century (and perhaps earlier) crude woodcuts were employed (frequently in Ulm) to manufacture playing cards. It is with this in mind that I present on these pages images donated by Kishor Gordhandas, from Bombay, a collector of the genre who specializes in collecting decks with non-standard images for the picture cards. As of his writing to me in March 2004, he claims to have collected five thousand such decks.  He writes:

The cards do not seem to be easily available, but may be in Spain they might be. All the Kings, Queens, and Jacks depict the Mona Lisa, but the style imitates the manner of Japan and Egypt, among other easily recognizable figurations. ... The second picture middle line shows the authentic Mona Lisa -- one with the "Authentico" logo is from the same deck for comparison. The other two are from an Austrian Deck and a Paris Deck. The Last line shows the make on 4 of Spades, and the back design card, and the white is the extra card. Mr Gordhandas would appreciate being contacted by other card collectors. With his permission, his e-mail address follows:   Creating "sets" of Mona Lisas is reminiscent of other examples cited in this study. See especially the "Mona Lisa Laugh sequence," "Mona Lisa in style of Dali's Persistence of Memory."