Faulkner & Eliot

My holiday postage: 22-cent stamps issued 24 and 25 years ago, 
like tiny book covers adorning every envelope.  Affixed 
while listening to this history of the post office.

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edin-bird exhibition

A handmade envelope from my correspondent in Edinburgh.  Inside, postcards from a retrospective of work by Elizabeth Blackadder at the National Galleries of Scotland:

 

Still Life with Gerberas, Moonlight, 2004

Chinese Still Life with Arum Lillies, 1982

Each in a private collection, oil on canvas

122 x 122cm, 100 x 112 cm, respectively 

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international postage

Ordering vintage stamps and paper goods online means that sometimes, the thoughtful composition of the delivered envelopes is as wonderful as what's inside.

These postage stamps arrived uncancelled on an envelope sent to me from England, containing a postcard written, addressed, and sent in 1914.  I chose the card on ebay for its photograph of the companion square to the garden square where I once lived in London.

At first, Elizabeth "1st" looked like a mossy green to me.  Turns out she's a sparkly gold.  An ambiguity suitable to the copper patina of the category "verdigris".  I'm letting the color scheme take me where it will.

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golden fleece

Detail of a postcard on its way across the country to my friend Mike. The tapestry image is a reproduction of Pae White's Sea Beast, on display at Power Plant in Toronto until January.  Pulled from a beautifully close-up ad in the October 2010 Artforum.

'M' cut from another, long-ago Artforum: an advertisement for a Jack Pierson show in Barcelona, 2006-07, saved for its typographical interest.

A Sea Beast detail lives up in my page header, too.  The original is 290 x 660 cm, cotton and polyester.

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