Vintage Christmas Cards

As I mentioned in previous posts, I'm a huge fan of Carol Grafton!
The collection Vintage Christmas Cards is an example of her at her 'ephemeralogical' (homemade word) best.

A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to travel to the Allentown Paper Show with Dover's Editor-in-Chief, MC Waldrep; at the show we met up with Carol and her husband John–we were all there to buy ephemera for future collections. As a first-timer to the show I was just part of the 'madding crowd' in the eyes of the vendors who were selling there. However, if I managed to tag along closely on the heels of John and Carol, and they were kind enough to introduce me as a colleague (which they were), everything changed for the better. They are both so well-known, and well-liked at these kinds of events that this type of introduction afforded me immediate entrée with the sellers. I was trying to put together images for the Vintage Christmas Pictura collection, and was able the lay my hands on some great large-scale, mid-century Christmas artwork. Like this guy.....

The decision to go more mid-century was in part because Carol's collection Vintage Christmas Cards had been published a little over a year before, and was doing incredibly well. I didn't want to duplicate her effort in any way—even though the Vintage/Victorian images that you find on the greeting cards in her collection are some of my favorite Christmas images ever (second only to Thomas Nast's wild Santas). Below are a few images from this collection that I really love.

First, a couple of snooping Santas. This is a genre, folks. The below two images indicate the breadth of this motif– #1) contemplating the act, #2) in the act.

I think that the snooping angel is a sub-genre of the snooping Santa. It's a more ecumenical approach...

This is one of my favorite Easter Christmas cards. Huh? I wonder what my mum's thoughts would be on this mixing of motifs???

And then there's the famous Rebel Civil War Soldier/St. Patty's Day Snowman card. Think I'll be printing this one up and sending it to all my Irish friends–sometime between December 25th and March 17th.