A Letter From The Publisher, Oct. 4, 1948

To those of you who happened to drop into the reception room of the TIME & LIFE Building a few weeks ago and, perhaps, mistook it for a grocery store or a bargain basement, the following explanation is probably overdue. At any rate, the reception room looks that way only once a year.

The occasion for its bucolic setting and display of fruits, vegetables, paintings, canned goods, baked goods, flowers, etc. was TIME Inc.’s seventh annual Country Fair—an event that has come to mean a good deal to us here as a way of exhibiting our extracurricular handiwork to one another and having it judged. This friendly competition began the autumn after Pearl Harbor because so many of our suburban members had taken to raising Victory Gardens and wanted to compare their produce with that of coworkers. The first fair was warmly received, and the succeeding ones have been no less so.

This year, however, the produce entries were virtually confined to a single cornucopian assemblage of 17 varieties of vegetables, submitted by a FORTUNE salesman who “farms” an acre or two of land at Oyster Bay, Long Island. There was no shortage of spectators. More of them, including scores of casual passersby, turned up than ever before, and one interested visitor confessed that “this is my third country fair at TIME and I look forward to it every year.”

The surprise of this year’s fair was the large increase in quantity and quality of the paintings exhibited. Perhaps this is a symbol of a national amateur trend. TIME’S Art Editor is inclined to think that it is, but the facts and figures to substantiate it are not yet available. At any rate, for the first time many newcomers exhibited their work in water color, tempera, oil, charcoal, and even pencil.

Some of the paintings were skillfully executed. Most of the schools of painting were represented—from the uninhibited Joe (Get In There and Paint) Alger sect to the ubiquitous abstractionists, some of whom found it necessary to attach typewritten explanations of their work for the enlightenment of our occasionally befuddled judges. Spectators, as usual, were fondest of the good old standby scenes of someone’s favorite Nantucket seascape or a nostalgic Connecticut farmhouse with trees.

In an attempt to find out where these amateur artists came from in our organization, one thing was quickly apparent: a majority of them are from TIME Inc.’s corporate, or non-editorial, departments.

Admitting the difficulty of bringing a cow, or any large beast, into Manhattan the Livestock division, nevertheless, was disappointing. There was only one entry this year: a dozen diminutive dinosaria (spotted newts), which dozed unconcernedly through the whole affair.

In most other categories the fair flourished. Knitting and Needlework produced a number of arresting entries as well as one of the fair’s three grand prizes: a beautifully hand-woven afghan. There was a hint of scandal in the Baked Goods division when a man walked off with first prize for cake baking, but it subsided quickly. A special award went to a young man who had taken the trouble to produce a 20-minute motion picture. For his part in lugging a heavy-headed, twelve-foot-high sunflower plant via railroad from his country home to the fair, TIME Circulation Manager Bernie Auer was awarded an A for effort. The sunflower died en route.

No lost children or casualties of any kind were reported beyond the heavy case of hay fever one of our committeemen contracted after examining the entries in the flower division. At the fair’s close the preserves and other edibles were raffled off and first prize, a choice Baltimore cake, went to a young lady who said she works for the Erie Railroad. We hope she enjoyed it and will be on hand for our eighth Country Fair next year.

Cordially yours,