Sought-after original first printing color 14.25 x 20 Family Dog ‘Skeleton & Roses’ concert poster (FD-26) for the Grateful Dead shows at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, California, on September 16 and 17, 1966. Designed by Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley, the famous poster features classic artwork of a rose-clad skeleton after a 19th-century drawing done by Edward Joseph Sullivan. Garage psych rock band Oxford Circle is listed as the supporting act. Printed by the Bindweed Press of San Francisco, with the lower left crediting “Mouse! Studios-66” as the artist. In very good to fine condition, with various wear to borders, including tape-repaired tears, pinholes, and areas of paper loss, the majority of which could be matted out if so desired.
A rare, highly coveted concert poster that marks the very first appearance of the Grateful Dead’s iconic ‘skeleton and roses’ motif, which Mouse and Kelley designed after discovering the illustrations of E. J. Sullivan in the 1913 book Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The image of a skeleton assembling a wreath and crown from a nearby rosebush seemed to them an appropriate design for a band named the Grateful Dead.
