Puck Christmas

Harrison Fisher's Christmas cover for Puck stages an allegory of the magazine's own editorial power. The cherubic figure of Puck—nude save a blue jacket, the traditional sprite of the publication's masthead—stands atop a small table beside a large box camera on a tripod, dangling marionette figures of well-dressed gentlemen. Across an ornate carpet reclines an elegantly gowned woman in yellow satin, lorgnette in hand, coolly appraising the puppets on offer. The camera implies that Puck captures and controls public figures; the woman, composed and choosy, represents a discerning readership or perhaps Society itself. Fisher renders the interior in a lush Orientalist domestic mode typical of 1890s illustration—richly patterned rugs, columns, draped fabrics—signaling fashionable affluence without satirical edge. The cover price, twenty-five cents, appears bottom-left.