Christmas Puck

Rows of toys march across a bright yellow ground: teddy bears in ranks, dolls, potted trees, and toy soldiers in the tall bearskins of palace guards, drummers among them. There is no scene and no story, only inventory, the shop window turned into pattern. Frank Nankivell arranges it all with a designer's flatness, each figure clean-edged and repeating, so the page reads almost as wallpaper. CHRISTMAS PUCK is lettered across the top in ornate outlined capitals. The approach is knowing: by 1906 the holiday had become a parade of manufactured goods, and Nankivell answers with a cover that is frankly, cheerfully all merchandise. The yellow field, hard to hold evenly on press, doubles as a boast about the magazine's color work.