'Tis the season to be a paper nerd. I cannot bring myself to send season's greetings in e-anything format. It has to be the old-fashioned way or nothing at all.
Thanks to the indie craft movement, Canadian designers, artists and printers offer plenty of options, from pen-and-ink drawings reproduced through letterpress printing, a technique that dates to the 15th century, to hand-cut templates of designs for linocut reproduction to hand-painted original art that is digitally printed. The results are far more beautiful and personal than the Hallmark-y, mass-produced variety of cards, which can feel about as special as a tea towel from a tourist shop.
When carefully selected and sent with a special handwritten message inside, craft cards are little messengers of the heart. They're often more meaningful than a present.
Papillon Illustrative Press
"People often say to us: 'Who sends greeting cards any more?'" says Chantal Bennett of the letterpress studio she founded with her husband, Joel Kimmel, in Westport, Ont. "But there are people who really love paper. And we do this well enough to do it full-time."
Bennett is a graduate of the Parsons School of Design in New York, while Kimmel is a graduate of Sheridan College in Toronto who does freelance editorial illustration for print outlets including Wired and The New York Times. The duo started the business in 2009, concentrating mostly on wedding invitations and custom-printing projects. In 2012, they branched out into greeting cards because "it allows us more freedom to flex our illustrative muscle," Bennett says.
Their cards ($6 each) are sold in more than 50 retail stores across Canada and the United States as well as on their online shop and through Etsy.com. Bennett and her husband focus on their skill in pen-and-ink line drawing. "We love drawing fun stuff – animals wearing party hats and figurative things," she explains.
Manufacturing is done by letterpress (or relief) printing – the common method of printing from the time of its invention in the mid-15th century by Johannes Gutenberg until the second half of the 20th century – which uses direct impressions from an inked raised surface. "I enjoy controlling the manufacturing process. It is time-consuming. But I love the tactile nature of it," Bennett says, adding that she calls herself the Press Lady.
papillonletterpress.com, 613-539-5451 or 1-866-782 9221
EverLovin' Press
The card line from this Kingston studio is largely a long-distance collaboration between owner Vincent Perez and B.C.-based illustrator Tom Froese. The two met when they were students at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, graduating in 2009. "Tom is my house style," Perez says. "He has an illustration that lends itself to the letterpress medium – the flat areas of colour and the textures that can be represented as half-tones." Each colour is applied separately and run through each time on the press, he explains. "You have to accept human error," he adds. The final result has the beauty of imperfection. "I love the saltiness and unevenness of the coverage."
A widely published editorial and commercial illustrator, Froese lives in Yarrow, B.C. "I love the eccentricity and kitsch of old Christmas decorations and how that hokey stuff is what ends up meaning Christmas to many people," he says. "So, I had this idea to celebrate that campy aspect of Christmas and elevate it with my illustration style."
He's also in love with the tactile pleasure of cards as objects he can store in drawers and hold in his hands. "It is very satisfying to get that fresh-off-the-printer smell," he explains with a laugh.
everlovinpress.com, 613-876-5927
Banquet Atelier & Workshop
"I am drawing all the time, all year around. I am often doing the Christmas season on the beach," says Sarah Edmonds, a graduate of Emily Carr University who started the Vancouver studio almost a decade ago after her first son was born. "I work from a wide vocabulary of imagery. I don't look too closely at other stationers. I go to libraries. I look at old books. Or attend art shows."
This year's holiday cards are inspired by a specific type of Pennsylvania Dutch folk art called "Fraktur." Edmonds carefully oversees the manufacturing process with a local offset printer, while marketing and sales is done by her friend Tammy Lawrence, a native of Regina, who left a career in television to join Edmonds seven years ago.
Banquet sells its cards ($5 each) online and wholesale to more than 300 stores internationally. It recently completed a custom set of Egyptian-themed cards for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to accompany the current Ancient Egypt Transformed exhibition.
banquetworkshop.com, 604-710-6923
Jamie Ashforth
"I am a mixed-media artist, but predominately, I paint in acrylics and in watercolours," explains Jamie Ashforth, an artist in Toronto who sells her holiday cards ($6 each) online through Etsy.com and in a variety of stationery and art stores in the city. Employed as a scenic artist for film and television sets, she started creating cards about three years ago, cutting up original prints from work that hadn't worked out well.
A year ago, Ashforth developed her current card-design technique. She first made small, colourful 6-by-9-inch acrylic paintings of animals – a polar bear, a buffalo, a walrus, a black bear and a fox – adorned with whimsical Christmas touches, such as striped socks, a wreath, a Santa hat or a necklace of lights. She then digitally scanned the paintings so she could manipulate the images to her liking and worked with a local printer to produce the final product.
This year, she has made holiday cards from original and simple watercolour paintings of a holly twig, a wreath, a pine tree and a pine cone, using the same scanning and printing process. "A card is a really accessible and affordable way to have artwork," she says. "I love the tradition of sending cards for the holidays and special occasions. There's something sacred about it."
jamieashforth.com, 647-454-1674
Duly Noted
By 2014, Rebecca Dimock had been the in-house designer at Halifax stationery store Duly Noted for almost four years, specializing as a designer of wedding invitations and other custom stationery. Last year, she was inspired to try her hand at Christmas cards. "I wanted to use a of printing called linocut. It's more tangible and brings the whole process much closer to the artist," says the graduate from Nova Scotia Community College, who grew up in the Annapolis Valley. "It's basically like a piece of rubber, which I cut and ink and then press like a stamp onto paper."
Dinnock drew images of animals in sweaters and carved the pliable template by hand. For printing, she kept the style simple and graphic, using only red ink. "Each one has a handmade feel. I have touched each one. If you look at my work table at home, you can see where my cat has walked across it, over the paper and the ink," she says cheerfully. "That is what my Saturday mornings look like."
The cards ($5-$7 each) sold well last year, so Dimock decided to make more for this season. This year's new addition are cards made with a quilling technique, where thin strips of paper are coiled up and then glued individually to a card.
dulynoted.ca, 902-446-5605, rebeccadimock.com