I’m a creative, experienced, multi-purpose artist and art director
who can take projects start to finish in a variety of styles.

Good designs sell –
my designs sell out!

Friday, July 15, 2011

"Gesture"

In the olden days, polite people made their rounds to each other’s homes and left calling cards with the servants who answered the doors. The lady of the house wouldn’t be home since she would likewise be making rounds leaving calling cards at other people’s houses. What a civilized gesture, and such a waste of time. If you really want to visit someone, why not show up when they might be home? Oh, right, because you shouldn’t expect to be entertained when you show up unexpectedly. That of course would be most uncivilized.

The relative beauty and expense of your calling card was just a part of the civilization game. If you had a really boring card, you must be either boring, or poor, or possibly really secure with yourself. If you had an extra fancy card, you must be interesting, or rich, or possibly really insecure with yourself. Odds are you probably had a card that fell somewhere in between, which added to the whole guessing game of where you fell into the perpetual pecking order.

This is all very quaint, outdated, and slightly disturbing. It’s a good thing our society has changed since then, right? Maybe not. We might slightly envy the elaborate dresses the fine ladies wore on their useless calling card rounds, but we also now know that they were being sucked in with bone crushing whale bone corsets and wore really impractical shoes. It’s much better to sit around in a t-shirt and leave a message on a girlfriend’s answering machine. I just wish we still had the manservant to listen to the messages and serve us tea.

Society really hasn’t changed very much. We just changed the rules. I go to your blog, you come to mine, I go to yours… it’s all very friendly and enjoyable, albeit with less fresh air than our ancestors got in the buggy ride from house to house. It’s all very civilized. Yep, very courteous and friendly, and I have to admit I really love doing it.

Sometimes visiting blogs is like visiting somebody’s house that has plants everywhere and toys in the yard and odd sculptures hanging from the ceiling. Sometimes it’s like going to the finest mansion in town and feeling kind of awed by what we find hanging on the walls. Sometimes we find out that our neighbors speak a different language or live in grass huts or igloos. It’s all really, really cool. Maybe even more importantly, we find out that there are a lot of nice and interesting people in the world, and we’re lucky to meet them.

These are calling cards I kept when cleaning out my grandma’s house. Maybe my grandma knew who Wm. Clouser was, and who he wanted to “Accept my Love”? The peacock fan is glued at the bottom and bends down to reveal Wm.’s name. Charlie Barro apparently thought that was a good idea with his disembodied hand offering a bouquet of roses “With love and fond wishes”. I wonder who he was trying to impress? Since neither of these men made it into my family tree, why were their cards kept all of these years? Were my ancestors heart breakers or heartbroken?

I scanned in the prettier cards in my collection. Others are simply script fonts engraved on heavy cards, but I like my great-great-grandmother’s card because she was studying penmanship, and that’s her actual writing – which goes to the point of why I keep these things I guess. They were in real people’s hands before they put on their gloves for the buggy ride.

Since it’s Illustration Friday, I put my own business card on top. I feel like I’m cheating a since I posted this hawk last year, but sometimes isn’t it the gesture that counts?

26 comments:

  1. what a wonderful collection of cards!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kind of like the ACEO cards of today. This is a really neat collection of cards. I loved this post. Thanks for sharing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. That was definitely my favorite post of yours. I know what you mean about the blogs. The ones with music and gadgets everywhere would be like a house overly crowded with knick knacks or something. Thanks for sharing your wisdom and spiffy card collection.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I really enjoyed this post. Thanks for sharing these remnants of another era.

    ReplyDelete
  5. What a wonderful collection. Very interesting! Thanks for sharing from the guy in the igloo!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Very cool! Love your connections to your past.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Wow Linda what wonderful calling cards you inherited, and what great family secrets lie there, I am intrigued by your great grand mothers not successful suitors, what fun!I really enjoyed reading your thoughts re blogs.
    It really is fantastic that we can meet people from SO far away just at the touch of a button. My legs would be very worn out walking my card out to you all the way from England....LOL!
    Enjoy your weekend, Jane x

    ReplyDelete
  8. It's such a strong and beautiful image, I could see it a hundred times and not get tired of seeing it. I always love the thought of calling cards; I guess my thoughts are they weren't sitting around watching television; they were getting out and trying to connect with others! What a wonderful post!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Great post...Love the Great great Grandmother's
    copperplate writing...beautiful!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Great take on the topic! Reminds me of the movie "The Age of Innocence"... I love that these calling cards were in your grandmother's thing...so personal and a bit voyeuristic.

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a lovely post, Linda. It reminds me of reading a chapter of one of the books of 'The Little House on the Prairie' series to my daughter in which the girls become obsessed with having little 'name cards'.
    You have a few lovely cards there.
    Paula

    ReplyDelete
  12. what a great blog post Linda! I like what you said about blogs!

    ReplyDelete
  13. This post is enchanting with its possibilities and insights to a time gone by. Thank you so much for sharing!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Fascinating post, and lucky you to have such a wonderful collection of cards! Love your card, too :)

    ReplyDelete
  15. Thanks everybody!! I'm glad people enjoy seeing these cards. Makes me feel like going through more of my treasures and see if I've got anything else that might interest people. At least calling cards don't take up very much space. I've also got a mental image of Jane walking to everyone's house from England. Yeah, the internet has been a happy thing for visiting!

    ReplyDelete
  16. Hi, Linda. Just stopping back by to thank you for your lovely comment on my blog yesterday. I hope you have a fabulously creative week.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Wonderful post, Linda...your hawk is gorgeous, and the images of the vintage cards are fabulous - I especially love your great-great-grandmother's gorgeous script..look at those amazing flourishes! Always so good to visit here!

    ReplyDelete
  18. Nice post! Love the history about these cards.

    ReplyDelete
  19. As far as art is concerned, there is no such thing as cheating.

    ReplyDelete
  20. I love history! Thanks for posting your wonderful finds, and then drawing a connection to our modern "calling cards."

    ReplyDelete
  21. Thanks everybody! As for cheating, you can see how Shirley's friend got ripped off at her blog, but happily it looks like everything got resolved okay. That kind of thing puts a dent in our happy blogging, but we can't let that kind of thing mess up our fun.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Hey Linda, wow I have never seen these cards, they are amazing, for want of a bettererererer word :) When I see the hand writing or the marks of someone's existence, the patina, the fingerprints, the care they must have gone too to make these cards - as you so rightly point out they reflect the bearer's character - to think of them alive and breathing and seething with the human joys, and taking such care to select these inanimate objects that might now be the only evidence you have that they once existed, as we do now, - well it kind of scares me,

    thanks for sharing this and I like your eagle :)

    sorry to be late I have been painting in my studio on the other side of town believe it or not!

    ReplyDelete
  23. Thanks Andrew! I like the way you said that. Glad to hear you've been painting. I'll wander over to your site and see what you've been up to :)

    ReplyDelete
  24. What lovely calling cards. I have a collection of antique postcards from my husband's relatives. It all seemed so civil and proper back then, didn't it?

    ReplyDelete
  25. What a wonderful post Linda. I love seeing those calling cards and although it was kind of silly, I suppose it was their way of being social and using up part of their day. It had to get boring at times, with being waited on and only having to worry about getting dressed, sitting down to eat, delivering cards, sitting down to eat again, having visitors for afternoon tea, etc...
    all kidding aside, you are so lucky to have those to hold on to.
    I think I'd have been considered quite eccentric and talked about incessantly due to my strange behavior. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  26. I have some old postcards too. Okay, I admit it, I'm something of a packrat, but I hide it well :) I'd like to see if I could get bored getting waited on. Probably, but I'd like to try it out for a while. Thanks for the comments!

    ReplyDelete