Don Widmer
Fanny and the Doll Corpse
2016
Deluxe Edition Artist Book Set
This deluxe edition includes two artist book structures housed in a clamshell box.
This limited edition of 10 is entirely hand bound, sewn and assembled by the artist and includes his illustrations and original story. Visit dwidmer.com/fanny for more information.
$600
Ten-year-old Fanny wakes one wintry morning to find her toy doll stripped naked and shattered in the parlor of Chicago’s famous Glessner house. A fan of Sherlock Holmes, she attempts to solve the “murder” by questioning several well-known architects including Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Isaac Scott. This work of historical fiction was inspired by Captain Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), a pioneer in modern forensic science and creator of the miniature crime scenes known as the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.
The Glessner House Tunnel Book features outside views of all four sides of the famous Prairie Avenue home designed by Henry Hobson Richardson. The interior view of the Glessner House parlor contains visual clues to the "murder" and is reminiscent of the miniature crime scenes constructed by Frances Glessner Lee.
Fanny and the Doll Corpse tells a story from the point of view of ten year old Fanny. It features a drum leaf binding. The 19 illustrations depict objects from the story with dictionary-like objectivity, appropriate for the shrewd mind of a police detective cataloging evidence.