Leota Woy (1867-1962)

Leota Woy was born on July 3, 1867, in New Castle, Indiana, and was in Colorado by 1888, where she attended the University of Colorado. In 1920 she moved to Los Angeles. Leota Woy seems to have devoted herself to the design of bookplates, postcards, and crests. I don't know of any other illustration credits for her, although she also worked in stained glass, embroidery, and needlework. She was a member of art clubs in Denver and southern California. Leota Woy died on January 23, 1962, in Glendale, California, at age ninety-four.

Leota Woy was most well known for her bookplates. This one was for the actor John Gilbert.

Here is a bookplate for Walter Sigfrid Olson. Note the vertical signature on the lower right.

During the picture postcard craze of the early 1900s, Leota Woy was a postcard designer. Her frog series from about 1910 was very popular.

Leota signed some of her designs with her initials encircling her copyright notice.

Leota also created a popular Valentine series of cards. This may have been one of the cards in that series.

This looks like a card from the same series.

Leota's design for a card of the Colorado columbine and the Denver Auditorium Building shows a completely different approach. 

Merry Christmas from

Indiana Illustrators & Hoosier Cartoonists!

Text and captions copyright 2013, 2024 Terence E. Hanley

Josephine Hollingsworth (1903 or 1904-1964)

Josephine Hollingsworth was born in 1903 or 1904 in Lebanon, Indiana, and as a child lived in New Castle and Indianapolis. She attended the John Herron School of Art in Indianapolis and graduated in 1926 after four years of study, making her one of the first class at Herron to receive a Diploma in Fine Arts (DFA). As a student and after graduating, Josephine taught art at Beech Grove, Shortridge High School, and George and Gordon Mess' Circle Art Academy. She also studied with Carolyn Ashbrook and Indiana University extension.

In 1929, Josephine set out for Chicago where she landed a job with a publisher of children's books. Her illustrations appeared in a book on natural history, a series of twelve readers for children, all fairy tales, and Pioneer Fire Makers by Bella VanAmburgh. Josephine also did advertising art for Indianapolis businessman Russell Fortune for publication in Good Furniture magazine. While in Chicago, Josephine continued her education at the Art Institute of Chicago.

On May 4, 1930, she married Howard Ross Poulson in Indianapolis. They had two children, Thomas Layman Poulson (b. 1934), a professor of biology at Yale University, and Carolyn Jo (Poulson) Hofstad. (See the comment below.) Jo Poulson lived with her family in Winnetka, Illinois, and Manhasset, New York. (See the postscript below.) She died on March 5, 1964, while visiting her mother in Miami, Florida.

A bookplate design by Indiana illustrator Josephine Hollingsworth.

Postscript (Dec. 6, 2012): I have found a little more on Josephine Hollingsworth Poulson, also known as Jo Poulson. After moving to the Chicago area and marrying H. Ross Poulson, Jo studied watercolor painting under Francis Chapin, a well known Chicago artist and a teacher at the Herron School of Art (1938). In March 1942, she returned to Indianapolis for a one-woman show of her watercolors at the Hoosier Art Galleries in the State Life Building. Prior to that, she had exhibited in the Hoosier Salon. She painted not only landscapes but also street scenes, circus scenes, and subjects as varied as a floral still life and a navy destroyer. At the time of her one-woman show, Jo Poulson was living in Winnetka, Illinois, and rearing a family.

This watercolor by Jo Poulson is in the collection of the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

Postscript dated December 6, 2012.
Revised and updated on December 6, 2019.
Text and captions copyright 2012, 2019 Terence E. Hanley