The valentine, as a graphic token to be exchanged by lovers on February 14, became very popular in the middle of the 19th century, and continued to increase in popularity and variety as the century advanced. In the first years of the 20th century there was an explosion in popularity of the picture postcard, and it was natural that postcards would be created to send on every holiday. Tens of thousands of valentine designs were printed as postcards. We have selected thirty favorites from our collection, and reproduced them here in such a way that they can either be removed and mailed or kept intact and the book given entire.

This volume features many adorable cupids, pretty ladies and charming children, and we hope our selections will enhance our customers’ Valentines Day.

As much as adults enjoy Christmas, children enjoy it even more. The young are not nearly as burdened with the financial and social obligations of the holiday, and are more open to the magic and wonder of the season. Thus children and Christmas are natural partners, and this fact is reflected in the prevalence of children in Christmas art. This is especially so in the area of the picture postcard, which enjoyed amazing popularity from approximately 1880 to 1910, the era from which these postcards come.

For this postcard book we have selected thirty images of adorable children engaged in a variety of Yuletide activities. Presents are given and received, trees trimmed, letters to Santa sent, carols sung and sleigh-bells rung in this delightful assortment.

Each age leaves an impact of its character in its greeting cards and other paper ephemera. We see in the beautiful postcards of the late Victorians that era’s predilections in both love and design.

The imagery in ‘Victorian Valentines Postcard Book’ is largely formal because, to the Victorians, love was a serious business. We see beautiful women, well-groomed children, and the classical February 14th icons of cherubs, ornate hearts and many beautiful flowers. This is a thoroughly decorated universe, featuring baroque typography, bows and ribbons everywhere, and the occasional touch of lace. So felicitously do Valentine’s Day and Victoriana mesh that much of what we think of as traditional Valentine’s Day imagery is Victorian in origin.

We have selected 30 favorites from our collection for this gathering.

For obvious reasons, we have a special place for elephants, not only in our hearts but in our collections as well. Many brilliant illustrators have expressed their affection and awe for this wonderful animal through the decades. Illustrators include: Johnny Gruelle, F.Y. Cory, Charles Robinson, Maude and Mishka Petersham and Tony Sarg.

The period between 1880 and World War I was the great era of the picture postcard. Inexpensive postal rates and high-quality, high-speed printing methods encouraged the growth of this craze, which swept the world and brought countless thousands of postcards into existence.

Christmas was naturally a popular postcard subject, and where we reproduce thirty very different and interesting antique postcards from our large collection in which jolly Santas and adorable children abound.

During the great era of postcard publishing (which dated from the 1890′s until World War I) a great many different designs for postcards were produced. Holidays were a favorite time to send postcards, and as Halloween was second only to Christmas as a card sending occasion, Halloween themed cards abounded. The imagery of these cards is varied, appealing, and dramatic. Our selections use the familiar imagery of Halloween – pumpkins, ghosts, witches, and black cats – but the mood is generally light hearted rather than frightening. We hope this assortment of favorites encourages a renewal of the happy custom of Halloween correspondence.

The images in "We Wish You A Crazy Christmas" were chosen from our vast collection of Victorian and Edwardian Christmas cards and postcards. Those eras produced millions of cards, for this a strong time for both mailed correspondence and Yuletide greetings. Most had traditional or religious imagery, but a substantial minority were – to our minds – malapropos, such as cow in a field, a tree blossoming in spring, a sandy beach. A smaller number goes beyond irrelevancy to weirdness, and these we have decided to share with our adventurous customers. They offer the opportunity to ponder, laugh, or to simply wonder "Why?"

Only when darkness comes does Halloween truly begin. Night is the time for mystery, for devilry, and for fright. All manner of mysterious and sometimes frightening creatures emerge from the shadows, including the two featured in our "Wicked Witches and Creepy Cats: A Halloween Postcard Book." Along with the pumpkin, the witch and her feline familiar are the most enduring symbols of All Hallows’ Eve, and thus are richly represented in the many Halloween postcards that were printed in the picture postcard’s Golden Age (1890 to World War 1). Our selection of 30 witch and black cat images include the mildly frightening witch, the adorable child witch, the pretty lady witch, one rather odd witch driving a roadster, and many very fine black cats.

Animals are an important, but often overlooked, part of Christmas. From the nativity onwards they have ben part of the family celebration. From our extensive collection of children’s picture books the Laughing Elephant has selected thirty illustrations featuring a wide variety of animals at Christmas. The detachable postcards are suitable for short Christmas correspondence, party invites, thank you notes, or as a small art book to be kept intact and enjoyed every Chirstmas season.

Here are 30 favorites from the beauties Detroit produced in her heyday, with swivel
seats, vogue interiors, Torsion-Aire suspension and Ultramatic drive. This was
fashion on the highway. The 1950s were the last stand of the painted, rather than
photographed, advertisement, and many of the images here show the skills of the artist
as well as the sculptural gifts of the car designers.

Storybook Frogs contains 30 oversized postcards, all featuring frogs; fairy tale frogs, walking frogs, talking frogs, pretty frogs and warty frogs, toady frogs and froggy frogs. In short, frogs of all kinds. This collection shows how many brilliant illustrators have expressed their affection for this wonderful creature through the years.

Why frogs, you may ask? It is a good question, yet one that is not easy to answer. Like many of our most enduring passions its origins are so deep any adequate explanation would be too lengthy for our present form. Put simply, mankind has always been drawn to frogs; from the ancient Egyptian frog goddess to the Roman frog kings, and in every culture all the way through history to Kermit the Frog, we have involved frogs in our mythology and entertainments. We appreciate the frog’s place in the evolutionary continuum, standing athwart the distinction between the primordial slime and dry land as they do. We also take note of their buggy eyes and super greenness, their remarkable jumping ability, and their long tongues and deep ribbits; frogs are very unique and so attract attention.

The editors of this volume, after looking at thousands of frog pictures, believe the answer its quite simple; frogs are funny looking, they make us laugh. Frogs are characters, somehow serious and comical at the same time (Mr. Toad comes to mind) they have personality. Finally, it is nearly impossible to draw a picture of a frog that is not funny to look at, we suggest you try.
As to our assertions about the value of frog appreciation we feel certain that the organizers of The Rayne Louisiana Frog Festival agree with us, as do the sponsors of the Toad Suck Daze in Conway Arkansas and the Frogfest in Cedarville Michigan. Any doubts you may have about the veracity of our statements can probably be alleviated by the venerable Calaveras County Fair and Frog Jumping Jubilee or the august Frog Museum in Berne Switzerland.

No frogs legs were eaten in the production of this book.

The Western writer Wallace Stegner once wrote that National Parks were “America’s best idea- inherently democratic, open to all. They reflect us at our best, not our worst”

In spirit with this idea and wishing to celebrate these national treasures the Laughing Elephant has gathered 30 striking and unique vintage postcards highlighting some of the best known and loved parks into a postcard book. Postcard books are a particularly pleasing book form as they can be taken apart and used for correspondence or kept whole as a miniature art book.

A myriad of postcards and other ephemera were produced to promote and remember a visit to one of these temples to nature’s beauty. We have selected a graphically striking group from among this abundance.

Some of the parks included are: Yellowstone, Death Valley, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Redwood Forest, Carlsbad Caverns, Great Smoky Mountains, Crater Lake, Grand Teton, Badlands, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Mount Rainer, Rocky Mountain, Glacier, Acadia, Hot Springs and many more.

Postcard books are one of our favorite projects, because they give us the opportunity to share material that doesn’t fit easily into a book or other project.

The list of illustrators represented includes Humphrey Bogart’s mother., Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister, students of Rodin and Howard Pyle, the creator of the Kewpies, suffragettes, freethinker and expatriates. We think their illustrations are as rich, varied and intriguing as their lives.

Clara Burd
Sarah Stilwell Weber
Maria Kirk
Rose O’Neill
Dorothy Lathrop
Jessie Willcox Smith
Fanny Cory
Maginel Wright Barney
Maude Humphrey
Elizabeth Mackinstry

A book of thirty vintage American postcards featuring illuminated nightscapes.

Night is a time when mystery reigns, and the beauty of contrast is most intense. For most of human history, night has been a time of largely unrelieved darkness, but with ever advancing methods of lighting the night world has bloomed.

Here we reproduce some of our favorite colored postcards, mostly from the late-19th and early-20th centuries, showing American cities, parks, fairs, shops, main streets, fountains, and waterfalls – each made more beautiful by night.

These postcards began as photographs which have been hand colored and printed. Famed graphic designer Barry Zaid says of this type of card, "Here was a synthesis of painting and photography resulting in a photographic look, with the clarity of color and detail that only an artist could create." These images are also known as ‘hand-tinted’.

Some of the scenes included are: Niagara Falls, The Brooklyn Bridge in 1905, the original Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Davenport’s Restaurant in Spokane, the Statue of Liberty, the Christmas Lights of Corpus Christi and Grauman’s Chinese Theater just to name a few.

A selection of thirty vintage wine posters reproduced in our generous postcard book format.

Wine inspires passion in many people, and so it is not surprising that it has inspired many wonderful posters. The majority of those we include here are French, for it is there that wine culture has reached its pinnacle. We also have attractive examples from Germany, Spain and Italy.

The examples we reproduce will delight poster enthusiasts but will also, with their variety and evocative power, please many who make wine an important part of their lives.

The last portion of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th are known in France as "La Belle Époque", and it was indeed a beautiful era, producing wonderful literature, music, painting, design, architecture, and graphic art. Chéret was the father of the French Poster, both as artist and inventor of the lithographic process that enabled easier and cheaper full-color printing. He was quickly followed by such masters as Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Berthon, Mucha, Cappiello, Grun, Pol, Villon, Grasset, and nearly countless others. The poster craze of this era functioned, in Chéret’s words, as “an art gallery of the street” and set the bar high for advertising art for many years. Here in our little collection we offer posters by each of these great masters and many others from this wonderful period of creativity.