John Berkey’s
super-spectacular
**OTIS ELEVATOR ADS**
There were 9 Otis Elevator Ads from 1975 — 7 of these were never seen until I tracked them down in 2010-2011!
Those 7 have been unseen for 35 years!!!
Below: The 2 OTIS ELEVATOR Ads that I collected and saved since the 1970’s…
This one was in ILLUSTRATORS 18 in 1976…
A detail…
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OTIS Ad #2
BELOW: This gorgeous future city was printed in the Sept. 1979 FUTURE LIFE magazine #13…
Details…
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A Berkey OTIS Portfolio!!!
Architech Steve Rugg contacted me in 2010 to let me know that he had a copy of JOHN BERKEY’s 1970’s OTIS ELEVATOR ART PORTFOLIO — it had 6 prints in it, 4 of them I had never seen before! Here is his photo of the portfolio…
John Berkey
In November 2011 I finally acquired one of the John Berkey OTIS Portfolios!
It only had 3 prints in it –OTIS issued these Berkey portfolios more than once, this one seems to be the final one they published back there in 1975 or so — the person who acquired this portfolio worked for OTIS in the 1990’s and found it in a trash can being thrown out after it sat in a cabinet for 15+ years!…
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An OTIS ELEVATOR Futuristic Airport!
Unseen for 35 years!!!
A detail…
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Berkey’s OTIS Futuristic Building!!
A detail…
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An OTIS Furturistic Hospital!!!
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An OTIS ELEVATOR Shopping Mall!
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Berkey’s OTIS Elevator Transport Hub!!
(If anyone wants a larger jpeg of any of these spectacular Otis ads, just let me know!)
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A b&w OTIS Ad
For a long time all I could find was this B&W version that was printed in ILLUSTRATORS 17 in 1976…
…
IT’S BEEN LOCATED IN FULL COLOR!!
Donated by Doug Beekman — THANKS, Doug!
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And another pic of it…
Demi Berkey found this Otis portfloio print in John’s files and had it photographed for me — thanks, Demi!
Notice how “red” the color is in this print…
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A 1975 Pre-OTIS Future City?
This Berkey future city painting in ILLUSTRATORS 16 in 1975 (for an ad agency different than the one who commissioned the OTIS ads)…
A full-color Prelim for sale on www.ha.com :
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Will I ever locate any more of Berkey’s OTIS prelims?
Or any of his OTIS sketches?
Maybe one of these days they will show up…
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Another Berkey Future City Painting
This is a 1977 3-ring 2-sided Flexiprint Folder binder that was made by Colad Inc. in Buffalo, N.Y. — done around the same time as the Otis ads…
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…..SURPRISE….. it was August 2011…..
Details of this exceptionally great OTIS Ad…
Responses from various artists who saw this great Berkey OTIS Ad for the first time in August 2011:
James Gurney: “Those Otis ads are awesome. I wish the present looked like Berkey’s future.”
Greg Pro: “Spectacular!!!!”
Stephen Burg: “Thanks – it’s a great one!”
Robh Ruppel: “I squeal with delight like a school girl :)”
Jerry Ordway: “That piece is spectacular! Thanks for the inspiration!!”
Steve Rugg: “Jim, that was awesome, I think you started an explosion of Berkey interest…”
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An Interesting Surprise:
In July 2011 I read Dan Brown’s 2009 book THE LOST SYMBOL and I was completely surprised to read the first sentence of Chapter One:
“The Otis elevator climbing the south tower of the Eiffel Tower…”
How interesting to hear a novel starting with mentioning Otis elevators!
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2 BERKEY OTIS PRELIMS
SHOWED UP (to unpublished ads)!!
Demi Berkey located these in John’s files in late 2011!!
Above: In B&W / Below: In FULL COLOR!!!
And Demi found a 2nd OTIS Prelim!!!
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One last bit of “BIG NEWS”….
In June 2012 Demi Berkey contacted me and said that she would like to send me a “Thank You Gift” for all I’ve done to help keep John’s work alive — she asked which genre I would like to have it from, and she would look around to find either a small painting or a prelim…
I thought about it for a few days, and then wrote back and said that I would really like something from the “futuristic” genre since the OTIS ads had been such a large part of my early appreciation of John’s art…
Demi wrote back a day or two later and said that she thought she found the “perfect” piece of John’s art for me…
And here is what arrived in the mail 2 days later…
This was Demi’s inscription on the back of the art:
And here is how I framed my Berkey OTIS Airport Prelim, I wanted to look at it and see pics of all 9 of the OTIS ads there with it!
