The Drama of Vintage Valentine's Days

Here are the Valentine's Day cards I'd mentioned previously, salvaged from my in-laws' basement in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

What's wonderful about these is the unpretentious font, as seen in the "wood/duck" valentine. I find this especially adorable: was it professionally render, an early wabi-sabi masterwork, or was the lettering where they skimped on the budget? Whichever, it's a strong marker of the times--that's the impression I come away with after studying hundreds of photos of the era, being exposed to however many movies and cartoons that also utilized this especially hand-rendered effect.

Pictured is a sweet little blonde girl, rocking away in this little toy wooden duck structure. Was it a common enough piece of furniture at the time, that any card company could hearken to it and connect with the card-purchasing audience? (In fact, the back of the card behind the girl's head was supposed to fold down and the entire card could rock like the illustrated toy.) The author certainly feels justifying in implementing the material of the structure as part of the pun in this greeting. The term "ducky" was certainly in coinage (though if we know anything about adults, it was probably on its way out at the time of this printing). But what is the function of omitting the d at the end of "and"? Is this girl from a rural region? Is she necessarily undereducated? Or is that merely representative of her youth? She can't be four years old in this picture.

On the right, the hole in the center of this guy's chest is a little metal brad, acting as an axis upon which his arm spins. It's a simple mechanism that stabs toward animation: you move the arm like he's dropping a letter in the mailbox. He's with his little girlfriend, they're holding hands, and he's dropping a letter (presumably to her) in the mailbox. Her task is to guess who's sending her this valentine.

Tick tock, little girl, tick tock. What's your guess?

Or maybe they're mailing together to a sick aunt. I don't want to suppose anything more prurient than this, again, given their youth. I am curious what the big V on his chest means: varsity? Visitor? Vadultry? Of course not: Valentine! This is the sweater-vest he gets to wear once a year. His mom has to make him a new one each year, he's growing so fast. She packs them away in a hope chest for the grandchildren these kids will yield in two short decades.

There's a story behind every card!

Postmark: 1940

I was very lucky indeed with this find: vintage stamps and postmarks from 70 years ago!

While poking around in Rebecca's parents' house, we found a box of old family photographs. I had no way to record them then, but we wanted to preserve these images and possibly upload them to share. They were wonderful images of the past: outfits, architecture, civic events, holidays, everything that showed what people were doing decades ago.

The next time we went out to Green Bay, I brought my laptop and flatbed scanner plus a backup hard drive, totally ready to scan the hell out of this pile of photographs. Predictably, they had vanished: a friend of the family had cleaned the house and was unavailable when we tried to contact her as to the photos' whereabouts. We don't think she took them, but we absolutely could not find them anywhere we looked (which isn't to say they weren't stuffed somewhere completely obscure).

But in rooting around for them, we found something else entirely: a trove of photos and old Valentine's Day cards from Rebecca's mom's side of the family. Right now I just want to show off these old, old stamps and the perfect specimens of postmarks they present. I will share some of the vintage Valentine's Day cards later, rest assured.

Xmas From Japan

This was a little Christmas card a friend sent to me from Japan. She represented an array of traditional winter/Christmas items and the (Anglicized) Japanese words for them. I was surprised that "candy cane" translated so easily into such a small word, and the origin of rizu is obviously linked to the Japanese pronunciation of wreath.

But more than that, I am charmed by the card by itself. The illustrations are sweet, the gesture of holiday tidings and connection is especially touching! This is a priceless item in my esteem, a simple card made by a friend for another friend. I feel bad that I couldn't do the same for her--write out all our English words for a traditional Japanese holiday we celebrate in the States, because we don't do anything like that.

Something like this is one of the rewards of having an international pen pal, and it's why I've been so excited to find new people to write to around the world. Once in a while someone does something nice like this for you, or you get to share something special with someone else. When I found out that England doesn't typically sell cinnamon or root beer-flavored candy, I boxed a bunch up and send them to a friend in West Yorkshire. I thought it would be uncommon and of interest. I know that's why I shop at World Market (or used to, before they folded), to access all that strange and exotic candy from around the world.

Buddhist Temple Deity

When pen pals send me letters, I love to scan the stamps in and upload them to my Philately folder on Flickr. I'm fortunate in that my pen pals have chosen a unique array of stamps to share with me.

This stamp was puzzling to me because I'm no longer in touch with the person who sent it, and she probably wouldn't have known what it meant anyway. I wanted to know what the image depicted was intended to be: was it a god or a demon? Was it a character from a very popular play? Why is its face chipped on the side? That suggests to me a layer of paint, on the mundane level, but the hair and the underlit features impress me with something more supernatural.

Fortunately, a person who knew found me. A Japanese stamp collector spotted my stamp on Flickr and asked to include it in her vintage stamp group's collection. She said the image was of a Buddhist temple deity, and that the stamp itself was minted in 1971. I thanked her profusely for coming out of the blue and resolving this nagging question in my mind. Can't always rely on that, but it's nice when it happens.

I liked it so much, of course, I incorporated it into the header image of this blog. I wanted some postal images but also something a little out-of-the-ordinary, and I felt this stamp met that challenge.

The Envelope Collective

On November 3, 2005, art students Garrett Miller and Adam Morse initiated the Envelope Collective, a "mail art" project. They invited anyone to send them interesting envelopes and stationery for a collection to be displayed online.

Around April of 2006 someone pointed this project out to me, knowing my interest in letter-writing and making stationery, so I compiled this collection of my efforts to send to them. In the upper left you'll see a simple laser-printer label I'd designed for my return address; upper right, more interestingly, is a picture of my buckle boot, which I'd gotten made into a legal postage stamp through Stamps.com. It's pretty common, old news now, but at the time it was an exciting new feature.

I used this buckle boot motif to create a logo for my personal Web site, Heavy Boots, and applied it throughout my DIY stationery caprices. In the lower left of the envelope you'll see an ink stamp I'd crafted: this was actually my first linocut experiment, and it was pretty elaborate. I took a picture of my boot, shrunk and reversed it in Photoshop, printed it out, pasted it to the linoleum block, then carved around it. That was my first ever attempt at linocutting--as you can see, I'd been dwelling on it for a long time before ever attempting it. The stamp turned out well and I used it in black ink on the front of the envelope and red ink for the pages within. The envelope, of course, was that wonderful Chinese paper with the labeled ideograms and intermittent item/picture. The pages, incidentally, were from an old Bert & Ernie drawing pad from my childhood: I lost it, found it as an adult, and the edges of this cheap paper had started to brown nicely with age. Now I save it for special stationery projects.

The Envelope Collective featured my envelope in their directory and the two guys in charge commented with interest on the postage stamp, adding that they would probably see that feature more heavily used in the future.

Now it looks like the Envelope Collective has shut down, as of 2008, despite their idealism: on their FAQ, when asked about any deadlines, they responded, "This project has no foreseeable end or outcome." Old pages may be found with the Internet WABAC Machine, and a blog entry from 2007. But www.envelopecollective.com is a dead link that returns an error message; however, www.envelopecollective.org takes you to an indie band on MySpace. They don't appear to be related to the art project at all, other than co-opting its name.

Postal Mystery!

Awesome: to make up for skipping yesterday's entry (which I regret!), I have occasion to post two entries today. Submitted for your consideration:


I assumed it was sent to me through the Postcrossing network, but there's no identifying code listed anywhere on the card. I tried searching for it based on the various clues:

1. The sender's signature resembles the name in the salutation, "Philipp," though it's addressed to me.
2. The postmark indicates it was sent out on July 29, 2009.
3. "Philipp" says he lives in the hometown of Beck's beer, namely, Bremen, Germany.

Despite these helpful hints, the program did not have listed in its own database any cards coming out of Germany around that date. So is this a pen pal I'd forgotten? Is this a friend from some other channel? I'll go through my other postcards and see if we've corresponded previously.

As it stands, an intriguing and well-written card like this, coming out of the blue, is still a pleasant surprise.

---

Update: It was indeed through Postcrossing. It was sent to me by someone who joined within the last three weeks, and he simply forgot to put the ID code on the card. Postcrossing features an excellent search program: I typed in everything I knew and, while it couldn't find an instant answer, it did later e-mail me with a successful resolution.

Stamps: New Things to Care About

If one is at all open to the idea of letter-writing, finds it at all appealing and discovers within oneself the motivation to continue, one becomes cognizant of certain new things.

One develops a sense of patience as one trains one's own hand to write neatly yet swiftly enough to carry one's thoughts to the page. That's the most difficult trick and quite a common complaint: it's faster to type than to write, and one's handwriting sucks anyway. And I'd be hard-pressed to convince today's generations of this, but it is quite rewarding to sit down and, over the course of several quiet weeks, practice handwriting.

With these come an attention to other details. One starts to critically examine the paper one is writing on. One takes a second look at the pen one is using. One gets excited for little things, like discovering a particularly cunning set of Japanese stationery.

One also looks forward to new stamps. One actually becomes curious about what stamps one's local post office has for sale, and one becomes excited about which stamps are coming soon. One may even become aware of a new level of drama: "The price of stamps is going up next Monday, but for some reason (shakes head, sighs) they aren't releasing the new rate stamps for another month and a half. No telling whose brilliant idea that was."

I picked up these Gulf Coast Lighthouses stamps today, but I'm looking forward to the release of the US Flags this month. When I was in the UK I'd hoped to pick up the McKean/Gaiman Mythical Creatures stamps, but no opportunity presented itself. I never ended up near a post office, and W.H. Smith was fresh out of any kind of postage.

These Are the Pros and Cons of Postcarding

Independent of Postcrossing, I sought pen pals on Facebook and a few other online sources. Many networks were free but the "pro" column ended there; in the "cons," their layout and design were at least unattractive and sometimes unnavigable, and it was very difficult to compel a real person to correspond. Many accounts had been abandoned due to lack of interest or perhaps being plagued with spam: setting up an account on these pen pal networks was an invitation for a barrage of "God bless, I'm a refugee from [west African nation] being held in [another west African nation], and I'm looking for love," or "God bless, I'm yet another nephew of this petty warlord you've doubtlessly heard all about, and I need your bank account info to send you ungodly amounts of money."

There's also a pen pal Usenet group in existence--alt.penpals--or it's only called that these days: currently it's overrun with obnoxious high school kids from the States (plus one middle-aged man who is only comfortable associating with teenagers), using it for a private message board. Lacking sufficient Web-savvy to figure out how to set up their own free forum in Google Groups (or any of a hundred other programs), they insult and harass anyone who shows up genuinely looking for a pen pal. More's the pity, it also attracts its share of sexually deprived subscribers from third-world nations. Don't go there expecting anything good.

None of this happened in Facebook. I found a group dedicated to exchanging postcards and made the acquaintance of a gentleman in Genoa who takes great pride in sending postcards from various Italian cities. His hobby is to collect postcards not only from different countries, but from different regions within those countries and cities within those regions! He has hundreds upon hundreds of cards and categorizes them diligently on his Web site--it is an impressive collection indeed. Below is one of the cards I have from him. Thanks, Davide!