Item #6091 Mariposa Codpiece Purple Pattern & Broadside Created by The Giant Dwarf [Merry Pranksters]. William Reid.

Mariposa Codpiece Purple Pattern & Broadside Created by The Giant Dwarf [Merry Pranksters]

San Francisco: The Giant Dwarf, 1969. Large broadside offset on purple stock, 17 1⁄2 x 23 in., folded into eighths, 5 3⁄4 x 8 3⁄4 in. In original red envelope. Item #6091

The codpiece pattern (Pattern No. 69-1), printed and distributed by artist William Reid in 1969.

William Reid, born on New Year’s Eve 1927, has lived and worked in San Francisco since the mid 1950s and was a working artist through the era of the Beats and hippies. A member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters for some time, and a collaborator with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Reid created this sewing pattern in 1969, several years before Eldridge Cleaver’s 1975 attempt at a commercial distribution of codpiece pants.

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