Tom and Jerry — Production Cel, Signed by Hanna and Barbera

This original production cel shows Tom and Spike in one of the recurring confrontations of Tom and Jerry, and is signed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, the two founders of Hanna-Barbera. It is accompanied by the official Warner Bros. Television certificate of authenticity.

The cel was produced through the traditional animation process: the drawing was transferred by hand onto a sheet of celluloid, painted one cell at a time and photographed over a hand-painted background. The result is a single frame of a sequence, an element of the production rather than a later reproduction of it.

Created by Hanna and Barbera in the 1940s at MGM, Tom and Jerry built its reputation on the pursuit between the cat and the mouse, a structure that produced an inexhaustible repertoire of slapstick situations; Spike, the bulldog, enters that machine as an additional and often decisive presence. A cel signed by both founders, with studio certification, is among the most direct ways of holding the work of the studio's authors.