Avant-garde's Letterhead

The following are from Elaine Lustig Cohen and Ellen Lupton's book Letters from the Avant Garde: Modern Graphic Design, most of which came from Elaine Lustig Cohen's personal collection. Elaine Lustig Cohen was an excellent artist/designer [more on that in a later post] who was married to the great Alvin Lustig. She and her second husband, author/publisher Arthur Cohen, began collecting letterhead in the 1970s for their Ex Libris gallery, but the letters rarely sold. Although collectors at the time tended to view them as unimportant, they offer an unique and personal perspective into many of the most important artistic movements of the early twentieth century.
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"A global network of avant-garde movements flourished during the first half of the twentieth century, connecting artist and designers across Europe and the United States. Written correspondence, presented on dramatically designed stationery, was a vital part of the infrastructure of this international community. Artist and designers translated concepts from painting, poetry, and architecture onto the commercial format of the letterhead, creating, in effect, ‘corporate identities’ for modernism. Stationery for Futurism, Dada, De Stijl, the Bauhaus, and other groups and institutions served as typographic manifestos for the avant-garde. Some of the works drew on the normative conventions of commercial stationery – often with a flash of irony – while others reflected new concepts of typographic rationality." - Ellen Lupton


Bruno Munari, Mazzotti. Italy, 1934


FT Martinetti, drawing by Giacomo Ball, Movimento Futurista. Rome, 1939


Fortunato Depero, Depero. Italy (Trentino), c. 1927 (Collection Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities, Santa Monica)


Anonymous, Fernando Cervelli. Rome, 1932 (Collection Getty Center for the History of Arts and the Humanities, Santa Monica)


Tristan Tzara, MoUvEmEnT DADA. Paris c. 1918


Johannes Baader and Raoul Hausmann, Club Dada postcard. Berlin, c. 1919


Anonymous, Cause Le Surréalism (a Surrealist association). Paris, 1940s


Benjamin Péret. Paris (Collection W Michael Sheehe, New York)


Alexander Rodchenko, Dobrolet State Merchant Air Service. Moscow, 1923


El Lissitzky. Moscow, 1924


El Lissitzky, Vesc/Object/Gegenstand. Berlin, 1922 (from the collection of Hans Berndt, Germany)


Theo Van Doesburg, De Stijl NB postcard. Netherlands (The Hague and Leiden), 1920


Piet Zwart, Wij Nu Experimenteel Tooneel. The Hague, 1925


Piet Zwart, Laga-Compangnie. The Hague, 1922


Thon De Does, Reclame Ontwerper. Rotterdam, 1930


Josef Peeters, Het Overzicht postcard. Antwerp, 1923


Kurt Schwitters, Merz Werbezentrale envelope. Hanover, 1924


Joost Schmidt, Das Bauhaus in Dessau postcard. Dessau, 1925-26


Herbert Bayer, Ernst Kraus Glasmaler Weimar. Weimar, 1924 (Collection W Michael Sheehe, New York)


E McKnight Kauffer, Lumium Limited. London, 1935 (Collection Cooper-Hewitt, Nat. Design Museum, Smithsonian Institution)

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all images from Elaine Lustig Cohen and Ellen Lupton's book Letters from the Avant Garde: Modern Graphic Design [link]
also see the blog Billheads & Receipts [link]
David A Bontrager has a remarkable collection of trucking company letterhead [link]
letterhead at amassblog [link]
Insurance Letterhead and Covers [link]

Year of the Monkey Postcards

About a week ago Amy at Aqua Velvet posted some remarkable Japanese Postcards from the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Here are more Japanese postcards from the same collection, all related to the Year of the Monkey ( ).


Monkey Trainer from Towa shinpo, Ogawa Usen, 1908

"Born 2004, 1992, 1980, 1968, 1956, 1944, 1932, 1920, 1908. People born in the year of the Monkey are the erratic geniuses of the Zodiac cycle. They are clever and skillful in grand-scale operations and are smart when making financial deals. They are inventive, original and are able to solve the most difficult problems with ease." -Namiko Abe, about.com


The Monkey in Morning Suit of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey Celebrating with Ozoni of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey's Baseball of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey's Rugby of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey Pounding Rice (Osaru no mochitsuki) of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


The Monkey's Playing Ball (Osaru no hogan nage) of New Year's cards, unknown artist, 1932


Monkey and Crab, Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Three Monkeys with Spade Shape Motifs, Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Monkey in the Guise of a Shinto Priest, Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932


Takahashi Haruka, 1932 [?]


Three Monkeys: See no Evil, Hear no Evil, Speak no Evil, Takahashi Haruka, 1932

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Boston's Museum of Fine Arts Japanese Postcards Collection [link]
Information about the Year of the Monkey in the Japanese Zodiac @ about [link]

Japanese Postcards of the Russo-Japanese War

"By the early twentieth century, convergent Russian and Japanese imperial ambitions in the Far East reached the boiling point over Manchuria. In February 1904 Japan attacked and sank much of the Russian Pacific Fleet anchored off Port Arthur. Weakened by successive and humiliating defeats that helped spawn the 1905 revolution, the Russians accepted U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt’s offer of mediation, as did the exhausted Japanese. Representatives of the two sides met in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in September 1905, where they signed the Treaty of Portsmouth. Under the terms of the agreement, Russia was forced to give up many of its earlier gains in Manchuria and the Far East." -Library of Congress


Side View of Temple Building with Red Sky Background


Balloon with Japanese Flag in the Sky


Sinking Russian Naval Boat


Red Explosion Motif and Silver Lines


Rising Sun, Cherry Blossoms, and Eagle


Danger Off Port Arthur


The Fall of the Variag


Letter from the Front


Nurse and Soldiers


Nurse Looking Over a Wounded Soldier


School Girls' Banzai


News Runners Rushing in with the Latest


Newspaper Man Rushing in the Latest


Newboys in Fight


Newsboy Selling Extras


Crowds Gathering to Read the News (by Hashimoto Kunisuke)


Children Holding Japanese and Russian Flags


Sailor

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"The Russo-Japanese War coincided with the emergence of picture postcards as a global phenomenon. Photographers, artists, illustrators, flat-out propagandists—all suddenly possessed, in these engaging little mass-produced graphics, a new vehicle for reaching a huge popular audience.

International postal conventions made it possible to circulate these images globally. Collecting postcards became a modest way to become cosmopolitan without much expense, and the war between Japan and Russia provided the first dramatic international spectacle for postcard manufacturers to focus on in common. Admiral Tōgō’s surprise attack triggered a postcard boom—not just in Japan but around the world.

This new mode of expression attracted many of the nation’s talented artists, including some who were or would become well known. The postcards themselves became ephemeral little works of art as well as little gems of propaganda.

This makes Japanese postcards of the Russo-Japanese War interesting in their own right, but this is just the half of it. Because Russia was also producing postcards of the war, and not only Russia but also France, England, Germany, Italy, and the United States, the great “war in the Far East” of 1904-1905 is the first modern war we can revisit, in a compact and manageable way, from a truly multi-national perspective.

We can literally “see,” through thousands of fixed-format images (postcards have remained the same size to the present day), what people throughout the world were being offered as a mirror to the war and all that it portended." -John W. Dower, MIT's Visualizing Cultures [link]

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all of these come from MIT's beautiful Visualizing Cultures collections [link]
also see the accompanying collection Yellow Promise / Yellow Peril, a collection of foreign postcards from the war [link]
another related collection of woodblock prints from the war [link]
an essay by John W. Dower about the war and these postcards (with more postcards) [link]
for more information and resources on the war visit the impressive Russo-Japanese War Research Society website [link]
LOC's Russian-Japanese Relations in the Far East [link]
Strange Maps Russo-Japanese War Cartoons post [link]
About Postcards post Russo-Japanese War Military Propaganda Postcard [link]