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Postcards from my collection;

A set of six postcards sent from Charlie to Maudie during February and March 1904. You may remember a previous post about Charlie and Maudie here

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In the first autumn of World War I, a German infantryman from the 25^th Reserve Division sent this pithy greeting to his children in Schwarzenberg, Saxony.

11 November 1914
My dear little children!
How are you doing? Listen to your mother and grandmother and mind your manners.
Heartfelt greetings to all of you!
Your loving Papa

He scrawled the message in looping script on the back of a Feldpostkarte, or field postcard, one that had been designed for the Bahlsen cookie company by the German artist and illustrator Änne Koken. On the front side of the postcard, four smiling German soldiers share a box of Leibniz butter cookies as they stand on a grassy, sun-stippled outpost. The warm yellow pigment of the rectangular sweets seems to emanate from the opened care package, flushing the cheeks of the assembled soldiers with a rosy tint.

German citizens posted an average of nearly 10 million pieces of mail to the front during each day of World War I, and German service members sent over 6 million pieces in return; postcards comprised well over half of these items of correspondence. For active duty soldiers, postage was free of charge. Postcards thus formed a central and a portable component of wartime visual culture, a network of images in which patriotic, sentimental, and nationalistic postcards formed the dominant narrative — with key moments of resistance dispatched from artists and amateurs serving at the front.

The first postcards were permitted by the Austrian postal service in 1869 and in Germany one year later. (The Post Office Act of 1870 allowed for the first postcards to be sold in Great Britain; the United States followed suit in 1873.) Over the next four decades, Germany emerged as a leader in the design and printing of colorful picture postcards, which ranged from picturesque landscapes to tinted photographs of famous monuments and landmarks. Many of the earliest propaganda postcards, at the turn of the twentieth century, reproduced cartoons and caricatures from popular German humor magazines such as Simplicissimus, a politically progressive journal that moved toward an increasingly reactionary position during and after World War I. Indeed, the majority of postcards produced and exchanged between 1914 and 1918 adopted a sentimental style that matched the so-called “hurrah kitsch” of German official propaganda.

Beginning in 1914, the German artist and Karlsruhe Academy professor Walter Georgi produced 24 patriotic Feldpostkarten for the Bahlsen cookie company in Hannover. In a postcard titled Engineers Building a Bridge (1915), a pair of strong-armed sappers set to work on a wooden trestle while a packet of Leibniz butter cookies dangle conspicuously alongside their work boots.

These engineering troops prepared the German military for the more static form of combat that followed the “Race to the Sea” in the fall of 1914; they dug and fortified trenches and bunkers, built bridges, and developed and tested new weapons — from mines and hand grenades to flamethrowers and, eventually, poison gas.

Georgi’s postcard designs for the Bahlsen company deploy the elegant color lithography he had practiced as a frequent contributor to the Munich Art Nouveau journal Jugend (see Die Scholle).In another Bahlsen postcard titled “Hold Out in the Roaring Storm” (1914), Georgi depicted a group of soldiers wearing the distinctive spiked helmets of the Prussian Army. Their leader calls out to his comrades with an open mouth, a rifle slung over his shoulder, and a square package of Leibniz Keks looped through his pinkie finger. In a curious touch that is typical of First World War German patriotic postcards, both the long-barreled rifles and the soldier’s helmets are festooned with puffy pink and carmine flowers.

These lavishly illustrated field postcards, designed by artists and produced for private industry, could be purchased throughout Germany and mailed, traded, or collected in albums to express solidarity with loved ones in active duty. The German government also issued non-pictorial Feldpostkarten to its soldiers as an alternate and officially sanctioned means of communication. For artists serving at the front, these 4” x 6” blank cards provided a cheap and ready testing ground at a time when sketchbooks and other materials were in short supply. The German painter Otto Schubert dispatched scores of elegant watercolor sketches from sites along the Western Front; Otto Dix, likewise, sent hundreds of illustrated field postcards to Helene Jakob, the Dresden telephone operator he referred to as his “like-minded companion,” between June 1915 and September 1918. These sketches (see Rüdiger, Ulrike, ed. Grüsse aus dem Krieg: die Feldpostkarten der Otto-Dix-Sammlung in der Kunstgalerie Gera, Kunstgalerie Gera 1991) convey details both minute and panoramic, from the crowded trenches to the ruined fields and landmarks of France and Belgium. Often, their flip sides contain short greetings or cryptic lines of poetry written in both German and Esperanto.

Dix enlisted for service in 1914 and saw front line action during the Battle of the Somme, in August 1916, one of the largest and costliest offensives of World War I that spanned nearly five months and resulted in casualties numbering more than one million. By September of 1918, the artist had been promoted to staff sergeant and was recovering from injuries at a field hospital near the Western Front. He sent one of his final postcard greetings to Helene Jakob on the reverse side of a self-portrait photograph, in which he stands with visibly bandaged legs and one hand resting on his hip. Dix begins the greeting in Esperanto, but quickly shifts to German to report on his condition: “I’ve been released from the hospital but remain here until the 28^th on a course of duty. I’m sending you a photograph, though not an especially good one. Heartfelt greetings, your Dix.” Just two months later, the First World War ended in German defeat.

The post Dispatches from the Front: German Feldpostkarten in World War I appeared first on OUPblog.

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Mr. Bunny has delivered new boxes of postcards! Art Directors will want to keep on the lookout.  I've always liked to print things and look at them - so I was especially chuffed to open these boxes.

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*** All cards from my own collection

**** Vintage Books available from March House Books

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Three of my favourite Springtime postcards illustrated by Rene Cloke;

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Above is a little summary of our New England vacation. A little Cape, a lot of New Hampshire, including a hike through the Flume Gorge, which I had never seen before. I was tickled to find these in a little shop in Bethlehem, NH. I love when old postcards come with messages on them. The bottom one was written by someone whose vacation mirrored ours, fifty some years ago.

I have lots to share, including some digital paintings I did while we were away. I finally finished Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I highly recommend it, especially if you’re an introvert or have a loved one who is. There are lots of us, so you probably do! I learned a lot.

Hubs and I enjoyed listening to Rob Lowe’s memoir Stories I Only Tell My Friends on our car trip (read by Lowe), and we’ve almost finished listening to Yes, Chef, a memoir by Marcus Samuelsson. Really fascinating and read by Samuelsson himself in his fabulous scratchy voice. His story begins in Ethiopia, then goes on to Sweden, throughout Europe, and on to New York City as he follows his dream of becoming a master chef.

Loved this post of fun summer things to do with your kids, by Blair Stocker of wisecraft. Also, this spaghetti monsters post over at elsiemarley made me smile—it’s part cooking, part craft, and all silly fun.

What have you been up to?

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The second most clicked-on blog post I've ever written was about sending promotional postcards to publishers. So I thought I should devote another post to covering that topic in depth.

What is my most clicked-on blog post, you wonder? An illustration I did of Peter Rabbit for Theatreworks USA's production. You wouldn't believe how many people search the web for "Peter Rabbit" every day!

Back to promotional postcards. If you're an illustrator looking for work in the children's book industry, one of the ways to get your art considered is to send promotional postcards to publishers.

I would say the first step would be to go to a bookstore and read, read, read the kinds of books you want to illustrate that are currently being published. Learn how the illustrations interact with the text. Study the illustrations and the publishers. Write down the publishers of the books that you think match your own artwork. If you love drawing dragons and sword fights, then sending postcards to that publisher who seems to publish only baby bunny books would be a waste of postage. Writers, you do the same thing here to find publishers who would be a good match with your manuscript.

2008 postcard sent to publishers

Ok, now you have some publishers. Google their websites for submission guidelines. Some only take submissions from agents, but there still are a good number that will take unsolicited submissions. Also, check out more publishers listed in the annual book, Children's Writer's and Illustrator's Market (CWIM) and search their websites for a catalog of books to see if they would be a good match for you. The Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) also has a listing of publishers. I would highly recommend joining SCBWI if you want to write or illustrate for kids. I volunteer as a Regional Advisor for SCBWI because the organization has helped me so much with my career and continues to help me with marketing my books and making neat connections with publishing professionals. Join SCBWI, go to your local and regional events, get involved by volunteering, and meet friends in the children's book industry. So important!

Should you send postcards of your art or your whole portfolio or what? Read the submission guidelines of each publisher carefully. Some may only take email submissions. Some only want postcards. Some want to see more. The vast majority will accept postcards. Postcards are easy for them - no envelopes to open and no scary virus possibilities with attachments - and they can see at a quick glance if your art is something they'd consider. You MUST put a website on your postcard where they can see more of your illustrations. When I was sending postcards to publishers, I liked to have one illustration and my website on the front of the postcard. That way, if someone tacks it to a board, they have my website right there on the front. This postcard of the little drummer boy I sent in 2008 to hundreds of editors and art directors. Editors have a say in choosing illustrators too, so send postcards to editors and art directors who work with the kinds of books you'd like to illustrate at each publisher. You can find names in CWIM, SCBWI's lists, Harold Underdown's "Who's Moving Where" section, SCBWI conference faculty, etc.

2010 postcard sent to publishers

What illustration should you use on your postcard? Only what you want to illustrate. Of course, that makes sense, but really, be careful with this. If you don't want to draw bicycles, don't put an illustration with a bicycle on your postcard. The best image for a postcard is one that is narrative (children's books tell stories and so should your image), and that shows a character (children's books have great characters, not still lifes). If you're better at animals, show animals. If you're better at people, show kids. If you like to do both and both are high enough quality, show both.

What should you put on the back of the postcard? The rest of your contact info and you can list other books you've illustrated. You can also include some little spot illustrations like these penguins on the back of my postcard from 2010. I had written a manuscript about these dancing penguins and sent this postcard as an art sample. In case an editor would be interested, I included a line saying, "These illustrations are from my WIP dummy, Penguin Cha-Cha-Cha." There were a few editors interested who contacted me to see my manuscript after receiving this postcard! Another editor found the illustrations on my website and asked to see the manuscript and then acquired it! PENGUIN CHA-CHA will be published by Random House Oct 2013!!

Current postcard marketed to people buying books

Where do you get the postcards printed? There are loads of online printers. I've used Vistaprint and Overnight Prints with success. I've also ordered samples from PrintRunner and plan to order stickers and magnets from there.

What size? I like the 4" x 6" size because it's cheapest to print and mail. You can do larger sizes if you want to include more detail or info on it, but check with the post office to see at what point you need to buy a full price stamp instead of a postcard stamp.

The first trade children's book that I illustrated was a direct result of a mailing I did. I had sent art samples to Shen's Books that had a little Asian girl on them because I knew they were a multicultural picture book publisher. Right then they were looking for someone to illustrate CORA COOKS PANCIT and the timing was perfect! I had been sending illustrations out for some time before that bite, so don't give up if this is what you'd really like to do. I had been fine tuning my illustrations to work for trade books by attending SCBWI conferences and getting portfolio critiques by children's book art directors. Those critiques and conferences were instrumental in helping me develop my work along the way, and I still go to them to continue to grow!

Current postcard marketed to people buying books

Now I have an agent, the wonderful Linda Pratt from Wernick and Pratt Agency, so Linda submits for me. I still make postcards, but now my postcards are to set out at conferences and book signings. So instead of marketing my postcards to editors and art directors, now my postcards are marketed to people buying my books. I have one book per card and I list the awards and accolades, like on these postcards for THE GOODBYE CANCER GARDEN and CORA COOKS PANCIT. I also created a postcard for my upcoming PENGUIN CHA-CHA picture book, and had been handing that out at conferences and book signings. I'm about to update it with the typography from the cover of the book instead of the font on it, which was something I used on the postcard before my cover was finalized.

Recent postcard about my upcoming book

Best wishes on your postcards!

Note to conference planners: This is a subject that I would love to speak on at conferences!






(CWIM giveaway winner coming up later today!)

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