Giveaway: Vintage Letterhead Sample Packs

I'm in the middle of a transition which requires me to create space in my home. Part of that process involves going through all my letter writing paraphernalia. And, wouldn't you know it? I have more than I require. A couple of years ago, when I had only temporary access to a color laser printer, I printed a bunch of refurbished vintage letterhead images onto half sheets of paper. Shortly thereafter, I lost them. 

Today I found the stash. 

Because I don't need so many copies, I'd like to give some away to you, dear readers. I have three packs of seven letterheads, printed on Southworth 25% cotton, linen finish paper, which I'll be giving away at random. There are two ways to enter this giveaway, first by commenting on this post with your favorite writing implement or favorite color ink, and second, by Tweeting "I'm entered in the vintage letterhead #giveaway at http://bit.ly/xdcOYg via @EverydayCorresp".

You may earn one entry per described entry method. So long as you live on the planet Earth, you are eligible to win. Entries must be received by 12:01 a.m. p.m. eastern time on Monday, March 12, 2012. I'll announce the winners in a post sometime on Monday afternoon. Winners will then have to contact me with their mailing address for delivery.

Enter quickly via Tweet

The Pen is Mightier, But...

It's 65 and sunny in Washington, D.C. Spring is in the air. As such, I'm feeling mighty green. So, today I pulled back the curtains, threw open the windows, and wrote a letter while sitting in the sun.

Feeling a tad industrious, I printed off the newly refurbished Smith Premier Typewriter Co. vintage letterhead image onto 28 lb. Hammermill color copy paper. Then, I picked up my desperately in need of cleaning Parker 45 loaded with Platinum Blue Black ink, began writing - and then promptly capped the pen an tossed the sheet of paper. The 45 was skipping and the Blue Black was bringing me down.

Because each of my vintage fountain pens requires repair, I took a chance on my first fountain pen purchase, a steel-nibbed Waterman Kultur. To load it, I cracked a new bottle of J. Herbin Vert Empire. It was sooo worth it. A fresh pen and some green ink kicked my mood into high gear, and I think the result was a pretty good letter.

Finishing the whole thing off with one of my Levenger paper clips and a homemade envelope made from green card stock.

Normally, I'd wait for a letter to arrive in the mailbox of its recipient before posting about it. But my afternoon cheer didn't want to wait to share The Smith Premier Typewriter Co. image with you, dear readers. If vintage letterheads are your thing, the image is now available for download in the Vintage Letterhead Image Archive. I'm pretty proud of this image, it's relatively good quality and I love the company logo of a typewriter atop a sword and plume, with the line, "The pen is mightier than the sword, but the Smith Premier Typewriter bends them both." Plus, that capital "P" is gorgeous.

LaFayette Brewery, Inc. Vintage Letterhead

In response to The Missive Maven's latest letter to me, the one with the cool rubber stamps, I sent back a letter written on paper printed with my most recently refurbished vintage letterhead image.

I'm especially proud of this new letterhead, from the LaFayette Brewery in LaFayette, Indiana. I think it's a really high quality image, and it should scale and print much better than previous letterheads I have posted.

This letterhead is now available for download in the Vintage Letterhead Image Archive. Also in the archive is a new image that has been available for a couple of weeks. While I didn't post about this new image, I did announce its addition on Twitter.

Musicians' Protective Union Letterhead

Many weeks ago, I received a letter from Julie at Whatever written on a classic letterhead. When I responded to the letter, I asked politely whether Julie would mind e-mailing me the image for posting here... and, well, BAM! Here it is! The image needed no cleaning up (anything needed to make the image more crisp is unfortunately beyond the exercise of my remedial GIMP skills). It blows up to top a full size 8.5" x 11" sheet of paper, but as with all the other letterhead images, I suggest printing it out two to a page (to produce two 5.5" x 8.5" sheets) to reduce distortion.

Also in the image archive is a new link to LetterHeady, a great new site that is compiling quite the archive of original scan vintage letterheads.

This image is now available for download in the Everyday Correspondence Vintage Letterhead Image Archive. However, if you follow Everyday Correspondence on Twitter, this is old news to you, as you hear about it yesterday.

George Bateman & Son Brewers Vintage Letterhead

In the spirit of the holiday party season, I bring you the George Bateman & Son Brewers vintage letterhead. The image is now available for download in the Vintage Letterhead Image Archive.

Enjoy!

Maison Orlhac Letter and Envelope

Although I am not French, do not speak French, have never been to France and rarely eat French food, I really wanted to write a France themed letter. So I did. I wrote, long overdue, to a pen pal on some laid paper printed with my Maison Orlhac vintage letterhead. Something about this particular letterhead and that particular paper makes them go very well together.

Then, I used some heavy paper that I purchased at the Paper Cult going-out-of-business sale a couple months ago to make an envelope. As you can see from the photographs, the paper is printed with a travel theme.



Then, to finish the whole thing off, I sealed the envelope with a sticker that came in a set of vintage travel icons purchased at the same Paper Cult sale as the paper for the envelope. If it's not obvious already, I had a very enjoyable time putting this letter together.

The refurbished Maison Orlhac letterhead is now available for download in the Vintage Letterhead Image Archive. Bon letter writing!

E.P. Cone Letterhead

I've purchased so much new stationery recently that I haven't written on any of my vintage letterhead in a while. But, in a recent note of congratulations, I wrote on this E.P. Cone letterhead. Unfortunately, I don't have any other information about the letterhead aside from the information contained in the image. E.P. Cone appears to have been a Nashville bookseller, stationer and general news dealer during the 1890s.

If you'd like to use this letterhead, it is now available in the Vintage Letterhead Image Archive.

Enjoy!

Pairs Well With a Mojito

Apologies for not having a picture of a printed example, but I've posted this wonderful vintage letterhead image in *you guessed it* the vintage letterhead image archive!

Red, White and Blue

For this letter to a pen pal, I decided to go with a color scheme rather than a theme. It just so happened that one of my latest vintage letterhead reproductions fit in with the red, white and blue scheme.


I used the same paper for the second page of the letter, but jazzed it up a bit by gluing down some used vintage stamps on the corners. I purchased these as part of a 25 piece lot on eBay for $1.50, including shipping and handling.


If you're interested, I have now made the Paul's Choice Inks & Mucilage letterhead image available for download. You may access it and the other vintage letterhead images featured on Everyday Correspondence here.

Vintage Letterhead Giveaway Contest!

I have a bunch of vintage letterhead reproductions, several of which have been featured here on Everyday Correspondence. Because it will take me a while to feature it all, I have decided to put it to use for the site by giving away a sampler pack!

I have two goals for this contest: 1. to reward readers; and 2. to get the word out about Everyday Correspondence. This contest is for a sampler pack comprised of two of each of the seven vintage letterhead reproductions that I have completed thus far on your choice of either white or ivory Southworth 25% cotton linen finish paper.

To enter, post a link to http://www.everydaycorrespondence.com somewhere on the internet and then take credit for the link in the comments section of this post (don't forget to post a URL where the link may be found).

The link can be posted anywhere, for example in a forum post, on the sidebar of your blog, as a feature post in your blog, the comment section of another blog's post, etc.

The posted link that draws the most traffic wins! A winner will be declared on Saturday, August 1.

NOTE: Deceptive links will not be honored as valid submissions. For example, anchor text "FREE MONEY!" with a link to this site.

Vintage Letterhead Image Archive

To download images, first click on the desired image to display the image in the highest quality available, then simply right click on them and "Save Image As" whatever you'd like to label it.

I recommend printing these two to a page on letter sized paper, to produce two 5.5" x 8.5" sheets when cut.

Intellectual Property Disclaimer: I do not own any of the below images. I do my best only to post images which I believe were created prior to 1923, published without copyright notice, or were otherwise not in compliance with copyright registration and renewal requirements, placing them in the public domain. If you have information to the contrary, please contact me.

1. Hotel Mecca, Cleveland, Ohio. Originally dated 1920. Postcards printed with this image are now available for purchase at the Correspondence Shop.


2. Robot Salesmen Ltd., Liverpool, England. Original date unknown.


3. Paul's Choice Inks & Mucilage, Jersey City, New Jersey. Original produced during the 1890s. Scanned from an original by We Made This.


4. H.N. Heusner & Son, Inc., Hanover, Pennsylvania. Original production date unknown.


5. E.P. Cone Booksellers, Stationers and General News Dealer, Nashville, Tennessee. Originally printed during the 1890s.


6. Maison Orlhac, Paris France. Original dated 1928.


7. George Bateman & Son Limited Brewing Company. Original production date unkown. Scanned from the original by We Made This.


8. The Musicians' Protective Union, Port Townsend, Washington. Original production date unknown. Many thanks to Julie from Whatever for the great find!


9. The Caldwell Brothers Co. Machinery Merchants, Seattle, Washington. Originally dated Oct. 18, 1907.


10. LaFayette Brewery, Inc., LaFayette, Indiana. Original production date unknown.


11. The Smith Premier Typewriter Co., Syracuse, New York. Original production date circa 1899.

This is my collection of "refurbished" vintage letterheads. They are images that I found on vintage stationary around the web and cleaned up using GIMP digital imaging software. It was all free to me, so I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be free to you.

New images will be posted as the letterheads are featured on Everyday Correspondence. Make sure to bookmark this page, or better yet, subscribe to Everyday Correspondence, to get word when new images are added to the archive.

For more free vintage imagery, I recommend the following sites:

Just Something I Made (vintage images)

The Blah, Blah, Blahg (mailing labels/address boxes and vintage-esq images)

Tammy Tutterow (vintage images of paper goods, i.e. forms, book pages)

Letter Writers Alliance (printable V-Mail stationery download)

LetterHeady (great archive of original scan vintage letterheads)

I would also like to give a shout out to The Zoey Blog. Inspired by the Everyday Correspondence Vintage Letterhead Image Archive, the authors of the blog made their very own family letterhead, and it's stupendous.

Updated 03.10.12

Robot Salesmen

This wonderful letterhead was sent off to a pen pal in Florida. So, to keep with the beachy-techie theme, I mailed the letter in an envelope I made from an advertisement I found with pixelated people enjoying the summer weather.


I then wrote the the addresses in block letters using J. Herbin Orange Indien. My topper was a black vintage cinema stamp commemorating a film from the 1930s - I'm just pretending that the film and my stationery are contemporaries. Just let me believe.

Robot Salesmen is now available for download here.

Roaring 20's Themed Letter

I must tell you about my latest fascination: vintage letterheads. I have been finding scans of vintage letterhead online and trying my hand at photo editing to obtain clean images that I can print (on my office color laser printer for max effect) onto quality paper.


This letterhead is from what I assume to be complimentary hotel stationary from the Hotel Mecca in Cleveland, Ohio. The original date (that I digitally removed from the image) was 1920. So, I picked up on that theme and decided to use an envelope I made from a liquor advertisement.


To top it off, I used a vintage black cinema stamp, commemorating the film Hallelujah, released in 1929, and a pair of classic Tiffany lamp 1 cent stamps.


If you would like to use the Hotel Mecca letterhead for your own correspondence, I have posted it for download here. It was free to me, and although I took the time to clean the image up, I see no reason why it shouldn't be free to you.