Laughing Elephant produces greeting cards, notecards, books, paper gifts, reproductions of antique valentines, vintage luggage labels, our popular series of children’s shaped books, French Notebooks and more.
Our products celebrate many subjects we hold dear such as family, friends, dogs, cats, babies, love, relationships, home, gardening as well as religious and inspirational titles. We strive to capture the ideals of past times with imagery from antique postcards, late 19th and early 20th century children’s books, vintage advertising and a wealth of other sources.
We began with the intention of showing the work of great and neglected illustrators and have since built a large library of images. These images are in myriad forms, though books are central to the collection. We have tens of thousands of things with pictures that please us: calendars, posters, labels, pamphlets, playing cards, bridge tallies, game boards, postcards, paper dolls, wallpaper, blotters, bookmarks, greeting cards, stickers, magazines, etc.
We are a family business located in an old nunnery in Seattle, Washington. One of our owners is Alexandra Day, creator of the Good Dog Carl series of books.
We began as the Green Tiger Press in 1969 and have widened our intentions to encompass gift books and stationery products (The Laughing Elephant), adult trade books (Darling & Company) and childrens books (Green Tiger).
We see it as our mission – and our joy – to sort through this vast library, discover particularly fine images, and then develop ways to use them in our various publications.
We are working on many new exciting products as well as adding new features to our site such as the ’see more’ feature now available on all of our luggage labels, sticker boxes and all of our postcard books and sticker packets. Be sure to check back with us and thank you for visiting!
A Little History of the Laughing Elephant
In 1969 Harold and Sandra Darling founded a company called Green Tiger Press because they wanted to share their love of old children’s books with as wide an audience as possible. Harold and Sandra still run our company today and sharing beautifully illustrated books and paper products with our customers is still our focus.
From its beginnings thirty years ago to the present day our company has undergone a number of changes; in 1986 the original Green Tiger name was sold to Simon & Schuster Publishing (it has since been reacquired as you will be hearing about shortly.)
In 1986 Harold and Sandra began Blue Lantern Studio to design and produce books for other publishers, and their seven children, now old enough to handle their growing collection of antiquarian books, began helping with the business.
Among the books we created during these years, the popular Good Dog Carl series of children’s books is probably the best known and most popular of our works.
In 1992 our family started Laughing Elephant Publishing to produce and distribute gift books and paper products that capture the ideals of past times.
In 1999 the Darling and Company imprint was added to produce books for the general trade, that is they are not specifically designed as gift books, though they are frequently given as gifts as they are made with the same attention to design and illustrative excellence found in Laughing Elephant’s gift offerings.
Finally this year we reacquired the old Green Tiger Press name and have begun to offer children’s books under this imprint.
The Ideals of the Laughing Elephant, Darling & Company and Green Tiger Press
All of our imprints reflect our belief that values and ideals are enduring, and that the insights of past times are still valuable. We try to communicate these beliefs through our products with sincerity and truthfulness. We design our books and paper products to be visually stunning, imaginative and creative. Finally, we hope our products will help people communicate harmoniously with each other, and that they will represent the essential truths embodied in their subject matter.
Staff
Harold and Sandra Darling are the owners and oversee all product development and manufacturing. Benjamin Darling and Jerry Houck act as our sales managers. Jack Stowe is our all around office whiz and in charge of keeping our customers happy! Both Jack and Jerry can help you with customer service, orders, billing inquiries and just about any other communication you need. Nick Rogerson and Cuong Sakata work in our warehouse, pick and pack all of our orders, produce seasonal products, formulate invoices, all with a rare attention to detail, as well as fulfill other tasks too numerous to mention here. Jason Meyer is our accountant and head operations manager, keeping the inner workings of the machine that is the Laughing Elephant, running along smoothly and with nary a hitch. Chev Darling is our graphic designer extraordinaire and head of the art department. Moses Gershbein is Chev’s right hand man, and fellow fabulous graphic designer. Abigail Darling is our editor-in-chief and keeper of the library; Her careful attention and intelligent upkeep, certainly keeps our collections from falling into disarray! Christina Darling develops content for books and gift products, edits and writes promotional copy and helps keep up the library. Christina’s passion, as well as increasingly her expertise, lies in the field of beautiful paper ephemera. Our dogs, Olive the Schipperke, Zeppo the Irish Terrier, and Zubiaga the Rottweiler think they are helping by trying to chase away the U.P.S driver and various other delivery people- we manage in spite of their assistance.
Where We Get Our Images
Almost all of the pictures we use in our books and gift products are antique. They come from old children’s books, posters, calendars, paintings and postcards. This differentiates from other publishers, who rely on commissioned, and we feel often insincere, artwork. We believe this gives our products a genuine nostalgia, and also allows us to mine a vast treasure trove of great art for our books and paper products. People who feel close to their heritage, value the works of the past one hundred years or so, or simply love imaginative art will enjoy our publications.
Design
The design of everything we publish is important to us, and we spend much effort on type selection, image selection, making sure the colors are accurate and the paper is of high quality, and many other details of product creation and manufacture. We believe that craftsmanship is sometimes lost in the pursuit of sales growth, and while we know that not everyone will see that we worked hard to make the products just right, they will sense that they are dealing with a company that cares.