Post #582594 by bigbrotiki on Wed, Mar 30, 2011 7:39 PM

On 2011-03-28 21:44, tobunga wrote:
Bob Bryant drawings. (in the style of Alec Yuill Thornton) SOLD

Each 5x7, ink on paper.

Honoring the men who gave us Tiki Bob: owner Bob Bryant and illustrator Alec Yuill Thornton.
The images are based on pix posted here by Sven, so in a way, it's honoring BigBro too, because without all of his efforts, we wouldn't have the understanding of Tiki Bob that we do today!

Thank you so much for the kudos, Eric! I was so thrilled to see those renderings in your booth, I had to have them:

I just love it when classic Pop culture icons are intelligently picked up and expanded upon! I mean these are the illustrations we always wanted Alec Yuill Thornton to do! :) Here are some more of his Kitchen Kibitzer cartoons:

You really caught the spirit of Alec's style!

So I was inspired to try and dig up more info on him, but there doesn't seem to be much on the interweb, not even a photo of the man. I knew he got the job to illustrate Trader Vic's Kitchen Kibitzer in 1952...

...because he worked for Gardner Dailey's architecture firm...

http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/cedarchives/profiles/dailey.htm

...who built the San Francisco Trader Vic's:

I remember that in 1994, when-in the course of my BOT research- I got a tour of the already closed San Francisco location, they had the original Kitchen Kibitzer renderings framed up on the wall there, almost all of them - so the Trader must have really liked them!

And then, Yuill-Thornton must have liked Bob Bryant's mixology when Bob bartended at Trader Vic's, and Bob must have liked his cartoons and asked him to design the logo for his new bar.

I found no other illustration credit for him though, and only one other architecture job that credits Yuill-Thornton, at this mansion, owned by the Matson Line family:

http://www.filoli.org/explore-filoli/history/lurline-matson.html

"Pool and Pavilion
Constructed: 1946-1947
Architect: Alec Yuill-Thornton (from Gardner Dailey’s office), Modified in 1957 by Charles Porter and Robert Steinwedell."

It seems that Alec studied "classic" art later in his life, as described in this brief biography:

"Born in Manila, PI on April 29, 1917. About 1933 Alec Yuill-Thornton moved to the San Diego, CA to attend the Army & Navy Academy. He then studied architecture at San Mateo Jr. College and UC Berkeley. Following a few years in Boulder City, NV, he returned to San Francisco and worked as an architect for Gardner Dailey and others. In the 1960s he took up etching, which he studied at the San Francisco Art Institute, as well as metal smithing, calligraphy, and jewelry making. His watercolors include scenes of Yosemite, the Mother Lode country, and San Francisco. He died in San Francisco on Nov. 14, 1986."

Well, I was thrilled to find out that he and I had attended the same art school, even if 20 years apart :) :

(Young Sven, fresh off the boat)

Thanks again for these genius little drawings!

..and one more Alec Yuill-Thornton original:

...yours are spot on, even down to your signature mimicking his "Alec"! :)