Balloon Fever, 1963

The collection consists of aviation prints of historical aircraft collected by John Houser. They are arranged into three series by collector sets.

Series I: Phillips Petroleum Company Historical Aviation Reprints, circa 1960s, contains ten monochrome reprints from the Phillips Petroleum Company Historical Aviation Reprints series produced in the 1960s. The reprints measure 11” x 8 ½” and depict aircraft produced by early airlines, early warbirds from World War I, and aircraft flown in World War II. The back of each reprint provides information about the aircraft or airline represented in the image.

Series II: The Edo Floater Collector Series, contains four prints of 1929 and 1933 floatplanes by the Edo Aircraft Corporation. Each print measures 11” x 14” and has a caption providing historical information about the featured floatplane in the image.

Series III: Leach Corporation Heritage of the Air Collection, 1959-1969, contains 42 color offset lithographs made from original watercolor paintings by Merv Corning. The original paintings were commissioned by Leach International to depict heroic scenes of early WWI planes and pilots to be used as advertising art. The series was originally intended to be 3-4 images, but were so popular that they expanded the series to 45 paintings which were featured in Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine for about 10 years starting in 1959. The prints in this collection measure 11” x 14” and each have a caption explaining the historical significance of the image portrayed in the lithograph.