Around Town: Postal Modern Handi-Hour at the Renwick

I never thought I'd be asked to prove my age in order to attend a letter writing event. And I still would, but for a postcard I received from Melissa, of Craftgasm, inviting me to attend a Handi-Hour, hosted by the Smithsonian American Art Museum at the Renwick Gallery, across the street from the White House. The event, which changes themes, costs $20 and gets you two craft beers, a souvenir glass, hors d'oeuvres, and all the crafting you can handle for two and a half hours. The July event was co-hosted by the National Postal Museum and the theme was "postal modern" so, of course, I had to attend. 

I really didn't know what to expect. I thought maybe there would be 10-12 people with a few cold brews around a large conference table. I was wrong. 

The event filled a ballroom sized space within the gallery, called the Grand Salon, and the crowd spanned all demographics. Beer flowed, a musician played, and crafting was had by all. Between the Renwick and the Postal Museum, the crafting supply table overflowed with quality supplies: colorful calendars, fabric swatches, cool first day covers, canceled stamps, envelopes, stationery, and more. They really brought their A game. 

I made several envelopes from cool calendar pages, and wrote a letter (while somewhat under the influence) to the Missive Maven. All letters placed into a box at the event were then posted for free by the Postal Museum!

I would have crafted more, but I ran into awesome people from the internet. Melissa stopped by to say hello, and Erin, from the Postal Museum, introduced herself. They were two of the masterminds behind the July Handi-Hour. Turns out, we read and adore many of the same letter writing blogs. 

In meeting other people from the internet, I was pleased to meet Ashley, an intern at the Postal Museum, who shared her fantastic tattoo. By the time I'd crafted, chatted, and used both my drink tickets, it was eight o'clock and the event was over. So, I packed my bag with a few extra craft items and my commemorative Handi-Hour glass, and called it a night. Just like that, the Handi-Hour came and went, a whirlwind of crafting and creativity in a town otherwise known for its buttoned up demeanor.

Letter writing is almost always solitary activity, its a warm feeling to do write with others. Our community would do well to have more letter writing events. While the Handi-Hour was a good time, this collaboration with the Postal Museum was a one time event. I know other communities have letter writing socials, but I haven't heard of any in my area. I feel a project coming on.  Are any of you, dear readers, in the Washington, D.C. and interested in moving forward the idea of setting up a writing social in our area?

National Postal Museum, Part III: Artifacts

After passing through the lobby, where I learned about the history of the National Postal Museum itself, and meeting the characters that have played important roles in the history of the USPS, I explored the artifacts that make postal junkies eek with joy.

I'm not why, but the Postal Museum seems to have a large collection of artifacts and exhibits focusing on the Postal Service in the 1940s. Then again, it could just be my own personal interest filter, and I chose to pay most attention to displays from the WWII era.

The beautiful vehicle above is a mail delivery truck from the early 1940s. The truck, while very different from the trucks of today, was a dramatic improvement over the original automobiles put into service in 1899. In the first test run, through snow, the automobile completed a six hour route by horse in under two and a half hours.

In addition to this mail truck, the museum also has a walk through mail delivery train and a roped off Pony Express stagecoach, neither of which I took photos of. Sorry. Maybe this is evidence of the existence of the aforementioned personal interest filter...

Which brings me to this piece of ephemera. Above is an envelope that was mailed to James Farley, Postmaser General from 1933 to 1940, by his vacationing son. What interests me so much about this envelope isn't so much that it was forwarded to Farley in a classified location, but that the envelope appears to be from a collection of stationery from The Stone Tavern in Lake Spofford, New Hampshire. I'm a big fan of hotel stationery (I have a letterhead from Hotel Mecca in the image archive) and am sad that is has slowly gone out of fashion.

Close to the letter to Postmaser Farley is the above envelope. The reason this piece is significant is not because of the individuals that mailed or received it, but because of where it was processed. The envelope was processed through the Honolulu post office on December 7, 1941, the day of the of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

In front of the museum book store and the stamp store, there are rows of mail boxes from around the world. Some of these box styles are out of date, but many are still still in use in their respective countries, standing on corners, hanging from lamp posts and telephone poles.

Can you guess which countries these boxes hail from?

At the end of my museum visit, I spent a good amount of time in the museum bookstore. In many ways, the bookstore of the National Postal Museum is a continuance of the museum experience. There is a long wall of shelves, filled with books on letter writing, mail art, stamp collecting, and historical perspectives on correspondence. I took the picture above because two books caught my eye, Good Mail Day and Yours Ever, both of which have been big hits in the online letter writing community in the last year.

I purchased the above two items as souvenirs from my experience. The first is the book The Art of the Handwritten Letter. The author, Margaret Shepherd, focuses much more on the emotional, human side of letter writing, rather than the rules of etiquette, an attempt to persuade the reader to actually sit down, write, stamp and mail. She writes many great reflections on letter writing, some of which I will be using here, on Everyday Correspondence, in the coming months.

The bottom picture is of a first day issue stamp and envelope commemorating Freedom of the Press. The NPM store has a pleasant selection of first day issues, easily numbering in the hundreds for visitors to sort through. So, it wasn't difficult to find a first day issue with personal significance for me to purchase. I plan on framing it and hanging it in my printing studio (aka my living room).

I had a afternoon visiting the National Postal Museum. While neither very large nor heavily visited, the museum has lots to offer, especially for the postal enthusiast. After all, we're the type of people that just love reading placards, aren't we?

Postal Artifacts, on Display and In Use

[image source]

It's Spring in Washington! And that means cherry blossoms and beautiful weather, both of which I spent the entire afternoon, yesterday, enjoying. While waiting for a friend to join me on the National Mall, I stopped into the Smithsonian Castle. The original home of the Smithsonian institution, the Castle now functions as a giant information desk for the network of museums, hosting small displays of items that represent the many museums in the area. Of course, the two items that drew my eye were those representing the National Postal Museum.



Originally used for mail collection in 1885, this charming lamppost letter box now sits just inside the side entrance on the front side of the Smithsonian Castle. It is mounted on a large plaque that informs the visitor about it's origins, and, it collects mail. If you're in the area and really need to send a post card, mail is collected twice daily.


Further inside the Castle I found this antique mail box. And I do mean mail box, in the most literal sense of the word. According to the placard, the tin can mailbox was used around 1950 in Hawai'i. Contents were soldered shut for delivery from boat to boat, or boat to shore. Unlike the above lamppost letter box, this tin can has been decommissioned and now resides behind glass.

National Postal Museum, Part II: Characters

Once you actually go through the historic lobby of the the National Postal Museum, you enter a large atrium, around the sides of which are the entrances to side rooms. Each side room focuses on different eras, methods of delivery, and persons important to the history of the United States Postal System. The exhibits on postal figures were some of my favorites, as they really deepened my knowledge of individuals that I though I already knew a lot about. For starters, history classes frequently highlight Benjamin Franklin's accomplishments as a scientist, founding father, and French envoy, students rarely learn very much about Franklin's role as the first Postmaster General of the United States.



Another character that gets lots of exhibit space in the museum is Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This may be well known by older Americans, but I had no idea that FDR was into philately! In fact, he was so well known as a stamp collector that he was often given gifts of stamps by foreign diplomats. Above is a reproduction of a campaign poster for FDR, hung above the President's stamp collection box. Just before the President's death, a friend had offered to have the box recovered, as a gift. After Roosevelt's passing, the friend returned the box to the Roosevelt family, so the mail tags you see on the box are original from that trip through the post. Below is a picture of another gift given to the Roosevelt, a shelf that the President put on casters and used to wheel about his books of stamps.


In another part of the FDR exhibit, placards explain how the President used postage stamps as a means of improving the national mood during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It was under Roosevelt that colored stamps were first introduced, in wonderful greens and pinks. So into stamps was the President, that he even designed a few himself. It's amazing what you learn when you actually take the time to read the plastic cards next to everyday looking objects.


At the far end of the atrium, there is a walk-through exhibit all about postal inspectors and the perpetrators they catch. I didn't feel quite right taking pictures of mail bombs and the whackos that send them... so I instead took this picture of a poster that gives pointers on how to identify a dangerous package. All around this poster are stories of train robbers (that stole mail carried by train), the unabomber, and the postal inspectors that spent much of their lives pursuing them.

Fascinating.

National Postal Museum, Part I: Victim of "Modernization"

All last week I tweeted with excitement about my day trip to the National Postal Museum here in Washington, D.C. Finally, on Friday, I was able to spend several hours at the museum, snapping pictures and ogling gorgeous stamps, reading letters of significance and learning about postal inspectors. While it was not my first trip to the museum, it was certainly my most enjoyable visit (probably because I was there alone and could take my time reading all the placards that interested me). Because the museum has so many pieces that I think will be of interest to you, dear readers, I have decided to break up the record of my most recent visit into multiple posts.


Originally the main post office serving the District, the museum building was designed in the Beaux Arts style, and was completed in 1914. The above two pictures are of how the lobby area would have looked when the building opened. On one side of the grand hallway are post office boxes, and on the other, mail windows where clerks would receive outgoing mail. And, in the middle of the grand lobby, wonderful, ornate marble counters.


Wait, back up, you might be saying - how it would have looked? Yes, that wasn't a typo. While it may not surprise you that the building had to be restored when the Smithsonian took over it's operations and turned it into a museum in 1993, it was not for the reasons you might think.

As it would happen, the lobby area was renovated in the 1950s. According to the docent leading the tour I was on, it had less to do with improving fixtures and increasing efficiency, than because the marble floors and plaster ceiling were held to be "dated," and in dire need of modernization. So, in the grand wisdom of our forefathers, the ceiling of the lobby was dropped, the lighting replaced with what look to be fluorescent light bulbs, and, again according to the docent, the marble covered with formica. Below is a picture of the lobby area taken during that (what I call) dark time.


While all of the original plaster work was destroyed during the modernization process, the lobby area has been restored with very well crafted and sculpted replicas. And, by golly, if you didn't read the placards, and ignored the fact that people were snapping pictures with digital cameras, you might just be able to make yourself believe it was 1914, and you were there to buy a sheet of 3 cent stamps to mail off a bundle of letters. Shoot, you might even want to complain about the rate hike, up from 2 cents, because of the war.


In the next post on my museum journey, we'll move into the exhibits! To find out more about the National Postal Museum, visit the museum website and take a virtual tour of the exhibits.

Snow Service

Due to the ridiculous amounts of snow we've received here in D.C., today marks my 8th consecutive calendar day without a postal delivery.

On Wednesday, I dropped some quality mail in the mailbox pictured above. I wonder if it's been sitting in there ever since.

Ugh...

Pulp

Washington, D.C. received as much as 30" in parts of the metropolitan area this past weekend. I live in Washington, D.C. Therefore, I have been stuck inside for the past few days, right? Wrong!

I actually escaped my dwelling place for a couple of days between snow storms (we are in the midst of the second storm as I write) and trudged around the city, making the most of my days off.

During one walking adventure in my soggy Chuck Taylors, I came upon Pulp, a stationery store with as much attitude as its exterior would suggest. I have read several mentions of Pulp on a few of the local blogs that I subscribe to, but had never been there myself. I consider this the first stop in what I hope will become a tour of my local pen, paper and ink stores.

Entering the store, I was greeted by the largest display of sassy, snappy, and charmingly rude greeting cards I have ever seen. The collection began at the front door and stretched all the way to the back, up a staircase, and then back some more. Fantastic as this cache of cards was, I was more in the market for loose stationery.

Luckily, I found some great letterpressed loose sheets (I'll post about them later). And, because I couldn't resist, I also picked up a number of cards (you'll see those posted soon, too).

On the whole, I considered the trip worth the journey. If you're ever in the area and need a cool place to kill some time, or you just really have a hankering for a greeting card that says, "I'm indie, edgy, but still like to celebrate birthdays," then I recommend you pay Pulp, located on 14th and S Streets N.W., a visit.

I have no affiliation with Pulp or any sassy greeting card companies.