Season’s Greetings Cards Round-Up

It used to be a great pleasure seeing the postman arrive with a bundle of festive holiday greeting and Christmas cards. Our habits have changed when the Internet arrived on the scene and nowadays we mainly send quick messages via email or smartphones or share images with our dearest ones on the social networks. In this post we're going to share some nice cards received by Irenebrination via email.

The first one is from the Met Museum Communications Department and it's an animated Gif of a Japanese woodbock print from 1853 by Utagawa Hiroshige, portraying a poetic winter landscape immersed in snow.

The second image is from Taschen and includes graphic art from its Magic, 1400s-1950s volume covering 500 years of magic history and graphic ephemera. The picture is taken from the "Alexander – The Man Who Knows" poster showing vaudeville magician Claude Alexander Conlin in his Oriental disguise and with a crystal ball prop.

The third card is dedicated to design fans and shows some products by Droog including the classic "85 Lamps" by Rody Graumans, the "Roosje chair" by Christien Meindertsma, the "Hare mat" by Ed Annink (featuring a pictogram by graphic designer Gerd Arntz) and the hilarious "Handle with care" teapot by Richard Hutten (a copy of a traditional Chinese teapot, a sort of design joke revolving around copycat products manufactured in China).

The next card is from Italian fashion designer and lecturer Cinzia Ruggeri, and shows a bull terrier with a Christmas tree in the place of its tail and a funny red nose, an image that evokes Ruggeri's cheerful dog designs from the early '80s.

Rather than closing this post with a final card received by email, we're sending a video message to all Irenebrination readers with this vintage footage by British Pathé showing people visiting Selfridges on Boxing Day. The video is dedicated to all those ones who want to stay away from the sales chaos and enjoy another quiet day. You're not missing much and, after the collective stress caused by the Christmas rush to buy presents, consumerism can definitely wait…