My love affair with illustrated letters began as correspondence between myself and my grandmother, varying between humorous cartoons and colourful illustrations for the simple delight that receiving a letter can bring. Add this to the surprise of being given something so beautifully crafted and the time put into making it by hand, and you have a unique gift which is infinitely more personal than an online message.
The letters themselves are a joy to create and I'm endlessly inspired by the concept. In its own right as an artist's brief, fitting an illustration into the confines of an envelope and exploring the relationship between the artwork and the address, is a fantastic challenge. Simple embellishment is something that any creative person might add to their letters; a stamp or lino print, stickers or cartoons, full illustrations or simple pictures, the small paper rectangle is your oyster.
Additionally there's the physicality of a letter and the ability to enclose small things such as tickets or scraps of fabric to the particular delight of small children (or indeed, anyone). The letters themselves can also be unconventional, made of origami folds in various shapes and colours.
Here are three examples of such intriguing but easy folds:
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/xGnC3nnDlaA" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>A few ideas of things to draw on envelopes:
Yourself or the recipient
Additional stamps of your own design
An illustration to complement the contents of your letter
Botanicals and spring flowers
Animals and insects
Nice things to enclose inside your letters are:
Pressed flowers
Tokens or vouchers (eg for cinema tickets or a hug)
Small sweets or chocolates
Stickers
Paper crafts
Tea bags
Buttons
Anything else you can think of.
Letter art is by no means a new trend. Originating as a pastime and means of keeping in touch with loved ones, surviving correspondence mostly comes from unknown Victorian artists whose letters remain as snippets into the lives of everyday people. With the introduction of postage stamps, and later the penny post, more people began to explore the placement of stamps and illustrative potential of envelopes.
More recent notable artists who have dabbled in decorated letters are Lucian Freud, Emma Chichester-Clark, Tony Ross, Gladys Nilson, Edward Gorey, Yves Saint Laurent and Edward Ardizonne. There are also many beautiful examples by the Washington Calligraphers Guild and in the Smithsonian's collection.
(Above) Edward Gorey to PN
(Above) Schoolmaster illustrated envelope by an unknown artist.
I strive for beauty in my work. It doesn't necessarily have to be conventional beauty, but an image must sing with that unidentifiable something that makes it a pleasure to look at. I like the idea of making ordinary objects unnecessarily but exquisitely beautiful for no other purpose than the smile someone gets upon looking at it.
If you're interested in Decorated Letters, I have a children's workshop coming up in February 2023 and an Adults class the following May. A tutorial is available for instant download on my shop, here.
If this article seems familiar you may have seen it published in Artists and Illustrators magazine in the June 2020 edition, where it was as a way to send a postal smile to friends and family in Lockdown.
I hope you have enjoyed and are inspired by this blog post!
If you would like to correspond via decorated letters, I would be delighted to hear from you. You can send one to me at this address.
Emma Leyfield
Studio 9, Three Storeys,
Old Bristol Road,
Nailsworth,
GL60QT
References:
Image: Illustrated letters from Edward Gorey to Peter Neumeyer from Floating Worlds: The Letters of Edward Gorey & Peter F. Neumeyer.
Image: Antique illustrated envelope image sourced from a Grosvenor philatelic auction.
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