Mail Art News #52: Early Mail Art + Weekly Review, Aug 23, 2023

August 23, 2023

Frederick Tolhurst, 1921 (source: The Guardian)

Early 1900s Mail Art

When was mail art invented? With human civilization going back thousands of years, the fact that some of those civilizations had postal systems indicates that we might find some really old examples of mail art. The first postcard is currently agreed to be the Penny Penates. You can click on the link to learn more about it. "The Penny Penates postcard was mailed to Theodore Hook—probably by himself—from London to Fulham, England, on 14 July 1840. Hook presumably intended the card as a humorous practical joke poking fun at the postal workers who would have processed it."

Commercially available postcards began appearing in the 1860s. The decorated envelopes from the US Civil War period (1860s) are also part of the story, including this printed envelope from 1861. It's written in comedic dialect, which is difficult to understand, but the style of it wouldn't look out of place if it showed up in my mail box tomorrow. See even more Civil War era envelopes here.

Art Ward, Jr.'s Speech at Camp Dennison, 1861

While researching the topic of early 1900s decorated mail, I was totally surprised to learn about leather postcards. According to the Hammer Museum: "Leather postcards came into being in 1903. They were made out of deer hide. Images were burned and inked into them. These postcards were novelties: sent to relatives and laced together as pillow coverings or wall hangings. Successful cards tended to be based on period stereotypes and play with puns."

leather postcards from 1907

Learn more about the leather postcard frenzy at the Wellington County Museum. Leather cards were banned in 1910 because they kept jamming up the postal sorting machines.

wall display made of leather cards dating from 1903 to 1908

Back to the paper postcards for just a moment. Check out this gem of a postcard from circa 1930s-1940s and if you'd like to sort through more than 25,000 postcard proofs from the Tichnor Brothers, who produced the card below, then this is the site for you.

source: A Brief History of Postcards

These commercially produced postcards are great but they aren't reeeeal mail art. Let's look at some real mail art from the early 1900s. For the purposes of this blog post, I'm defining real mail art as an envelope or postcard that was created as a unique object of art, or in a very limited run, by one person and sent through the postal system, ie not commercially produced.

The following images are from The Journal of Antiques and Collectibles:

from 1906

from 1912

1915 to 1918

Henry (Harry) George Daniels was active in the early 1900s. To learn more about H. G. Daniels, visit: A Life and Love on Paper and A Letter to a Mail Artist.

(source: The Postal Museum)

Another UK artist, Frederick Tolhurst was active from 1909 to 1940. The article in The Guardian explains that he was sending mail art to his children, who were living with relatives as result of a nasty breakup of the Tolhurst household. The Postal Museum also has documentation on him.

Frederick Tolhurst, (source: The Guardian)

Frederick Tolhurst, 1917 (source: The Postal Museum)

As mentioned in Mail Art News #48, the Art Cover Exchange (ACE) was founded in 1935 with the goal of combining correspondence, education, friendship, philately, and art. Here are some early examples and you can read more about it here (pdf).

I'd love to see more of these early ACE artworks, but I'm not sure where to look yet. I was able to find a few more on another page at the ACE website above.

artist not named, 1942

artist not named, 1943

And now we can move into the Ray Johnson era. The photo below is from the MOMA website.

Ray Johnson, moticos, 1965

♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦ ♠ ♥ ♣ ♦

Weekly Review, August 23, 2023

drawing by Thomas Brown, converted to mail art (below)

The overall look of this David Stafford collage, as documented by Karen Champlin on IUOMA, reminds me very much of the futuristic sci-fi / fantasy scenes I was creating with midjourney, an A.I. art generator, not too long ago. Love it!

Adam R has now made 238 rubber stamp portraits. If I had a mail art museum or an art museum in general, these would be on display and probably for sale in the gift shop.

Some mail I sent to Nick Tauro, Jr., including a print of Galen Gibson-Cornell's work and a print of the famous Flammarion.

Made some changes to an incoming card from Erica Durante. Ready to send out. Fun.

Theo Nelson has many great postcards and ATCs for you to look through on his website. Just click postcards on the menu and then click a number.

Here's #14 and # 34:

Linear Hillside, Squiggly Line Rainbow Clouds, White Mountain

Mountain & Cloud

Ian C. Dengler is continuously dreaming up imaginary artistamps.

Julie Matevish shared an image of a work that she made in 1993 and mailed in 2018.

Carolyn Hasenfratz Winkelmann shared the following image on IUOMA. Comments from the artist: "This is a collage made from a variety of found papers, many from old art projects of mine. There is a bit of marker and colored pencil added in the middle. It was inspired by a project I did in school long ago."