Greeting Cards

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Today's episode is a
bit of personal therapy for me. Yeah, in the dingiest way.

(00:22):
It's not deep. I am working through my personal feelings
about greeting cards lately. Here's why. Okay, I am trying desperately,
as a natural born clutterbug who also married another clutterbug,
to just get rid of the stuff in our house
that is hoggin' up space, sure, which includes the backlog

(00:44):
of greeting cards. And I'm trying to set some rules
and consider which ones have value and why. And of
course that led me to go, where did these come from?
Why are we doing this? And then it came a
history project. There we go, because that way I can
parse it and think about their origin point, and that

(01:06):
will help me make the rules that will enable me
to more clearly decide on the fly do I keep
this one for sentimental posterity reasons or can I toss
this one? I think it has actually worked, by the way.
But okay, we're going to talk about greeting cards today
as I always say with any of these, you know,

(01:27):
kind of wide survey type things, not comprehensive. Obviously, we're
going to talk about some global history, but as we
go on, a lot of it becomes about England and
the US, because frankly, these are the places most obsessed
with greeting cards as we know them today. But it'll
be a fun little trip around the world before that. Yeah.

(01:48):
In The Romance of Greeting Cards, written but in nineteen
fifty six by Ernest Dudley Chase, there's a passage that
reads quote, who can tell who originated the idea of
sending a word of greeting? If it were possible to
go back to that faraway age when the cave man
roamed the earth, and when there was no written word

(02:11):
and probably little spoken word, we would doubtless find that
greetings of friendship or symbols of a desire to be friendly,
were sent or carried from one to another in the
form of a sign, a leaf from a tree, a flower,
a bright feather from some beautiful jungle bird, a stone,

(02:31):
a crystal, or any one of a thousand and one
objects that might have been recognized as a token of courtesy,
good cheer and friendliness. And it's true we don't know
the origin of one human giving another person a token
of greeting, but there are some obvious precursors to the
modern day greeting card. Two places are usually invoked in

(02:55):
discussions of early greeting cards. We're using the term greeting
cards pretty loosely at this point, but those places are
Egypt and China. In ancient Egypt, early greeting cards were
not cards at all, but they were sometimes bugs, well,
at least representations of them, specifically scareb beetles, which were
considered a sacred symbolic representation of the god Capri. So

(03:19):
just as scaubs rolled dung to create balls that are
suitable for laying eggs, in Capri was believed to roll
the disc of the sun across the sky. If you
have been to any museum with even a small Egyptian collection,
you almost certainly have seen scaubs represented in beads, amulets,
and other artifacts. Scabs came in various forums associated with

(03:41):
different meanings, and they often had things written on their underside.
This could include things like names, mottos, or prayers, but
some had inscriptions that appear to be well wishes or greetings,
suggesting that they were given as gifts to convey those
wishes and greetings. These were usually inscribed with messages of

(04:02):
good luck. They were associated with New Year's greetings as well.
Papyrus was also used to send messages of good will
or cheer in Egypt for centuries, and one of the
things that I read about this suggested that even if
there was nothing inscribed on it, it has been interpreted
by some historians that if you gave someone a scarab

(04:25):
at the start of a new year, it was still
meant to convey these ideas of good greetings and good cheer.
China's history with the idea of sending warm wishes to
others is linked to wooden greeting tablets, which date as
far back as the Han dynasty in the third century BCE,
and which remained in use well into the fourth century.

(04:47):
These visiting cards could be very basic, with a name, address,
and perhaps a job title. Another type of card, which
is more like the idea of a greeting card we
would use that term today, could include more space civic
and personal greetings. The earliest archaeological finds of these types
of wooden greetings was pretty recent. It was in the

(05:08):
nineteen thirties, and it actually took several decades for enough
of them to be unearthed that researchers started to focus
on them. These were used as communication among officials and
dignitaries as a means to show respect as well as
to maintain connection and good relations. One, for example, that
was translated by Maxim Korokov, was mentioned in his twenty

(05:31):
twelve paper Greeting tablets in early China Some traits of
the communicative etiquette of officialdom in light of newly excavated inscriptions,
reads simply quote youth huang chaw bows repeatedly asks for
your well being, and then it includes the name and
the country of the sender. That paper will of course

(05:54):
be in our show notes. It is a deep and
detailed dive into these missives, So if you are interested,
I have you set up with reading material. An article
from South China Morning Post written earlier this year That's
twenty twenty six by weekek Kun notes that early New
Year greeting card exchanges in China were very formal. They

(06:17):
sound a little stressful for these reasons. The traditional card
was a calling card for the new year, and there
were a lot of social rules around them, and the
contents of the greeting had to be way more than
just the simple happy holidays that less enough on a
lot of modern cards. The development of the paper industry

(06:39):
also meant these greetings had enabled the transition from those
inscribed pieces of thin wood as the means to send
greetings to more manageable paper cards. The earliest paper cards
in China are believed to have been spring festival cards
that became popular in the Tong dynasty in the seventh
to tenth centuries. Over time, time, other events in holidays

(07:01):
included greeting cards like the New Year, and it was
these New Year's cards that became so important that a
poorly written greeting could really damage a person's social standing.
That's very stressful to me. But according to Wee Kakun's article,
over the course of several hundred years, these earnest missives
took on a new role as a way for corrupted

(07:23):
bureaucracy to send bribes and expensive gifts to one another
to grease the wheels of government. Eventually, greeting cards in
China moved from the realm of the wealthy, elite and
political to something that everyday people shared with one another.
This includes the traditional red packets given it New Years.
There's are the red envelopes with a greeting on the

(07:44):
outside printed in gold with money tucked into them. These
are given by married people to the next generation, and
they too have their own customs and etiquette, like only
using fresh crisp new bills and in even numbered amounts,
with eight being the luck keist and four being an
absolute no now because that number represents death in Chinese culture.

(08:07):
In ancient Rome, it was common practice to give laurel
branches that were coded in gold as a wish of
good fortune for the new year, and this eventually evolved
into imagery of those gold branches being used on objects
with New Year's greetings, which then eventually transitioned to versions
written on leaves of paper. This led to the practice

(08:27):
of written greetings being adopted throughout Europe. These remained largely
a way to celebrate the new year and share hopes
for a good year ahead with friends and business associates.
Wood engravers also started to produce small prints that served
as a means of conveying these greetings, but Most of
the cards that were given to people in Europe during

(08:48):
this early phase of greeting cards were handmade. Soon the
practice expanded beyond the New Year, people started writing Valentine's cards.
The oldest Valentine card on is a small piece of
paper written in fourteen fifteen by Charles, the first Duke
Dorleon to his wife von Darmignuc at the time he

(09:10):
was captive in the Tower of London. He had been
captured following the Battle of Agincour, in which France was
soundly defeated by England. His wife was younger than him,
which he referenced in the card. They had gotten married
in fourteen ten, when he was just eleven years old
and he was sixteen. At the time of his capture,
he was twenty one, and he wrote her this poem

(09:32):
on a card to be carried by a messenger. It went,
I am already love sick, my very gentle Valentine, since
for me we were born too late, and I, for you,
was born too soon. God forgives him who has estranged
me from you for the whole year. I am already
love sick, my very gentle Valentine. Well might I have

(09:54):
suspected that such a destiny thus would have happened this day,
how much that love would have be commanded. I am
already love sick, my very gentle Valentine. We're going to
talk about that translation, which is partly mine, on Friday. Sadly,
the two of them would never see each other again,
as Charles was held captive in England for twenty five

(10:16):
years and Bunn died before his release. He left behind
a significant body of poetry, though he's considered one of
the great court poets, and he began a trend that
became a tradition of cards that bordered on being love
letters being sent as greetings. Coming up, we'll talk about
a book designed to help people write something valuable in

(10:38):
their greeting cards, but first we will take a quick
sponsor break. The problem of how to write a good
greeting wasn't only an issue in Chinese greeting card history.

(10:59):
A lot of people have struggled with what to write
in cards because not everyone was as good with words
as the Duke d'arleon. In sixteen sixty nine, a book
called a Valentine Writer was published, and it featured a
collection of verses that someone who might be struggling with
what to write on a card could use. It also
featured a printed Valentine on its frontispiece, and this is

(11:21):
widely believed to be the first printed Valentine. The first
standalone pre printed Valentine's card is really not known with certainty,
but there is one candidate that was submitted to the
BBC by the Castle Museum, York, and this card features
a very ornate floral border that's been punched to look

(11:41):
like lace and a central image of a woman in
a blue dress. The interior of this printed message reads quote,
since on this ever happy day, all nature's full of
love and play, yet harmless still if my design 'tis
but to be your Valentine? That printed in January seventeen

(12:01):
ninety seven in London. The card that is in the
Castle Museum's collection also includes a handwritten note on the card,
and that sounds maybe less romantic, a little more annoyed, perturbed.
Maybe uh we can take a look though. It reads quote,

(12:24):
mister Brown, as I have repeatedly requested you to come,
I think you must have some reason for not complying
with my request. But as I have something particular to
say to you, I could wish you make it all
agreeable to come on Sunday next without fail, and in
doing you will oblige your well wisher. Catherine moss Day. Yeah,

(12:50):
we don't know what that was about. I'm very curious
what was going on between Catherine moss Day and mister Brown. Yeah,
mister Brown. Did she love you and it was unrequited?
Or did you owe her money? I don't know. Something.
I can write a whole thing. Even with books like
a Valentine Writer and the rise of cards with pre
printed sentiments, Valentine cards were still something that was considered

(13:13):
a bit of a luxury. It actually wasn't until the
eighteen hundreds when Britain's uniform penny post made the cost
of sending such cards something that was in the grasp
of more of the population. Christmas cards actually came a
bit later in the game. This was not because people
were not sending Christmas greetings, but the tradition in England

(13:34):
and other parts of Europe was to send Christmas letters
to friends and loved ones, to share wishes for the
good holidays and a prosperous New Year, and to catch
people up on the happenings in your life. Just like
modern Christmas or end of year letters tend to be
for people who are more motivated than me to send

(13:56):
such things. But in eighteen forty three that changed thanks
to Henry Cole. As the Christmas season of eighteen forty
three approached, Cole, who was a Public Records Office administrator,
was experiencing a bit of dread at the thought of
writing Christmas letters because he was very fortunate and he
had a wide circle of friends, and that meant he

(14:18):
needed to write a lot of letters, and he was
also just tight on time. He was already receiving letters
from other people, but he couldn't imagine ever being able
to respond to them all. It would have been considered
very impolite not to do so, so he came up
with an idea. Rather than do the very impolite thing
of leaving a letter unanswered, he thought he could maybe

(14:40):
commission an artist to create something that could be printed
in bulk, so he could send the same thing to
everyone and streamline his holiday correspondence responsibilities. And the artist
that he asked was J. C. Horsley. Worsley was quite
famous as a painter, even though in eighteen forty three
he was still just twenty six. He had at that

(15:00):
point exhibited a number of paintings at the Royal Academy.
He had won a number of accolades. Even so, his
reputation was not as impressive as it would one day become.
Cole gave Horselee a brief on what he had in
mind for an image. He wanted a family sitting down
to a holiday feast, but he also wanted to depict
them doing good works and helping the less fortunate. So

(15:24):
Horseley came up with a three part image. The central
and largest section features the feast, and then it is
separated from each side by a framework of wood and foliage.
In the left section we see a man handing out
food to a woman and child, and then the right
section depicts a woman draping a blanket or a cloak
around another woman. A drape of fabric beneath that main

(15:48):
image of the feast reads a Merry Christmas and a
Happy New Year to you, and at the top was
a line that just said two and a blank for
the name of the recipient. Popule loved the result, and
he had one thousand copies printed on heavy card stock.
They had to be printed in you could say it's

(16:08):
black and white. It was actually kind of a CPA
tone and then hand painted, and the result is that
the central image is in full color, while the side
images are in softer, more diluted tones. This is also
why if you look at images of this card online,
because a number have survived, they may all look a
little different. It's because of the hand painting. These cards
were quite small. They were five and one eighth by

(16:30):
three and one quarter inches for reference, This is a
little smaller than the most common postcard size today, which
is four by six inches, and Cole sent these out.
This apparently actually upset some people, but not because it
broke the social more of penning a personalized letter. The
problem was that the children in the image are shown

(16:52):
drinking from wineglasses, and a number of temperance minded people
on Cole's list thought that was very in a prop
This was a time in England when the temperance movement
had a big surge. But nevertheless, there were people in
his circle that thought this was a brilliant idea, and
they copied it and started sending Christmas cards as well.

(17:14):
Although it did not become a common practice until later
in the eighteen hundreds, Henry Cole won a design prize
in a contest sponsored by Prince Albert just two years
after his Christmas card debuted, and he was instrumental in
conceptualizing and mounting of the eighteen fifty one Great Exhibition
as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was

(17:36):
knighted in eighteen seventy five. Yeah, he was pretty interesting.
Greeting cards became popular in the US very shortly after
they did in England, and one of the first entrepreneurs
to really take advantage of the interest that people had
in this new way to let people know you were
thinking of them was a woman from Worcester, Massachusetts named
Esther Howland. After Esther graduated from Mount Holyoke in eighteen

(18:00):
forty seven, she founded her own business after receiving a
Valentine card from England. I read one account that said
this card came from one of her father's associates. She
had the idea that she could design and sell her
own Valentine cards and then have her brother, who worked
for the family business, take orders for them whenever he
went on sales calls. His first time out, it said

(18:23):
that Esther had a goal that he would get two
hundred dollars worth of orders for them, and then when
he came home he had actually had five thousand dollars
worth of orders, which is quite significant. These are really
lovely little art pieces. They often combined fabric and lace
with paper to create ornate designs that contained little poems
as the greeting for the first batch of samples they

(18:46):
had used for those sales calls. Esther had made them
by herself after convincing her father to get her all
the needed supplies, but as those huge orders rolled in,
she knew she needed a staff to keep up, and
she sometimes described as having actually created the first assembly
line because she hired several other women friends of hers,
and each of them had a specific component of the

(19:07):
card that they were responsible for adding. Ester wasn't the
first person in the US to produce Valentine cards, but
she was the first to create a line that felt
special and could compete with the ones that were imported
from Europe. By eighteen fifty, her line had expanded and
her company was advertising a whole product line, which ranged

(19:29):
in price from five cents to a dollar. Her most
expensive cards had tiny springs tucked in between layers of
lace and printed imagery, so when you pulled them out
of the envelope, they'd sort of fluff up and create
a lux three dimensional shadow box effect. Others in the
premium category had layers and layers of silk and lace

(19:51):
that could be unfolded and reveal a beautiful picture inside.
Soon she expanded to make cards for other occasions like Christmas,
New Year's and birthdays. Howland really drove the development of
the greeting card industry in the US in its earliest phase.
Her company, which became the New England Valentine Company in
the eighteen seventies, produced cards and also books. The New

(20:15):
England Valentine Company's Valentine Verse Book, for example, was a
book of decoratively printed poems so that consumers could replace
the verse in a purchased Valentine if they felt that
it did not suit their needs, they could just find
a better one in Holland's book and then cut it
out and paste it over the one that the card
came printed with. Esther did eventually sell her company in

(20:37):
eighteen eighty. That was so that she could take care
of her father full time. It became quite ill as
he got older, and then by the time she died
in nineteen oh four. The greeting card was a standard
part of holiday culture in the US. We'll talk about
the early days of Christmas cards in the US after
we hear from some of the sponsors that keep the
show going. While Esther was building her Valentine card business,

(21:09):
another entrepreneur, Louis Prong, was focused on Christmas cards. Prong
was born in Breslau, Prussia, and he moved to the
US in the eighteen fifties after being involved in some
revolutionary activity in Prussia. He settled in Boston and started
working as a lithographer. He had learned the lithography trade
from his father because the family couldn't afford to send

(21:31):
him to school. In the early eighteen fifties, Prong created
illustrations for Gleason magazine before starting the lithography company Prong
and Mayor with his partner Julius Mayer in eighteen fifty six.
He took over the business entirely four years later and
it became El Prong in Company. Prong's company printed things

(21:51):
like advertisement art and business cards, and he continued to
learn the latest techniques to ensure his company was producing
top quality work. In eighteen sixty four, Prong traveled to
Germany to learn a new technique, and that was chromo lithography.
Up until that point, all lithographs worked the same way
that Cole and Horseley had done with their cards. They

(22:14):
were printed in two color black and white or in sepia,
and then they were hand painted. But chromo lithography removed
the need for the hand painting step, and so you
could use multiple lithographic plates to add the color. Prong
returns to Boston completely inspired by the possibilities of this
new technique, and right from the beginning he really wanted

(22:35):
to push chromo lithography to create incredibly complex images. He
wasn't doing just a few passes with color plates. He
was creating these vivid, deep color images using as many
as twenty plates per design, and in doing so he
really set a standard in lithography that was hard for
other companies to match. In eighteen seventy five, he used

(22:58):
that process to produce a Christmas card. Prog's card did
not feature any of the symbols of the season that
you might expect on a Christmas card. It was just
an image of a flower, not a point setia, just
a regular flower with the words Merry Christmas underneath it.
I couldn't find an image of that original eighteen seventy
five card, but I did see an image of the

(23:19):
eighteen seventy six card that appears to feature pink roses,
and two different cards from eighteen seventy seven. One of
those looks like it features slightly stylized carnations, and the
other looks like a spray of wild flowers, including a pansy.
Prongs cards were so pretty that they gained popularity really quickly,

(23:40):
and over time the company started using more standard holiday imagery,
although they still outpaced other printers on quality. Prong was
reportedly selling and astonishing five million cards each year by
the eighteen eighties. The Prong company also initiated a very
popular program where it's started having contests each year for

(24:02):
aspiring artists to design the next card. This is a
lucrative contest. The first placed winner got one thousand dollars.
That was a lot of money in eighteen eighty when
this contest started. Second, third, and fourth place also got
prize money in smaller increments. It also was unique in
that it was open to women and to men competing

(24:23):
equally offering women an unusual opportunity to get their foot
in the door of the commercial design market. The submissions
were displayed at the American Art Gallery, and the winner's
cards would be printed along with their name on the
back of the card. Prong would also sometimes purchase the
rights to cards that had not been in the top four,

(24:43):
and he would sometimes sign contracts with artists from the
competition as designers for the company. This made Prong cards
collectors items. People wanted to get the winning card every
year they wanted that art. It also served another purpose.
Prong always had an ey on art education, and he
used this contest to share information about the lithographic process

(25:05):
with the public. His company still exists today and makes
art supplies for the education market, which is why that
name sounded so familiar to me. This contest ran from
eighteen eighty to eighteen eighty four, and by the time
it was done, a lot of other printers were catching
up to Prog's level and the US greeting card market
was well established. While Prong is often lauded as printing

(25:30):
the first American Christmas card, there's another rarely mentioned figure
in card printing who put a Christmas card out in
the late eighteen forties. That was shop owner and printer
Richard Hps of Albany, New York. According to the Albany
Institute of History and Art, Peace had a card designed
by a woman named Eliza Forbes and printed it in

(25:51):
black and white for most likely the eighteen forty nine
holiday season. The image is interesting because it almost feels
like pea sore Forbes had seen a copy of the
Coal Horsely card, maybe use that as inspiration. It features
a family celebrating Christmas in the center. That image spills

(26:11):
over to the right and left. Along the bottom of
the image. To the upper left is an image of
what looks like a holiday fancy dress ball, and to
the upper right is an image of the building where
PiS's shop was. This card was obviously intended to also
be a little bit of advertising for the shop. There's
a banner of text that arches over the family, which

(26:31):
reads Peas's Great Variety Store in the Temple of Fancy.
The Temple of Fancy was the actual name of the store.
Under the family, the card reads a Merry Christmas in
a Happy New Year, and then there are the two
and from lines that have blanks for the sender to
fill in. It's not clear how many copies of this
card were printed, but as the messaging was specific to Albany,

(26:55):
it doesn't really seem like they traveled very far beyond that,
and that account for this card being kind of a
relative unknown. I feel like I want shirts that say
Temple of Fancy, such a great name. There was a
concern around this time, fueled by critics of greeting cards,
that sending sentiments in card form was really just a

(27:18):
fad and that people were going to get tired of
them in the twentieth century, But of course the opposite happened.
Printing processes got better, so even inexpensive cards looked pretty good. Additionally,
life got busier for everybody. Just like Henry Cole, they
turned to greeting cards to ensure they stayed in touch. Additionally,
cards more and more frequently offered ways to enjoy works

(27:41):
of art. We talked about that a little bit in
our episode on Tyris Wong, which came out on May
twenty twenty four. You want to talk about beautiful Christmas cards,
so pretty, that's where to look. Another earlier artist whose
work became coveted on greeting cards was a woman named
Kate Greenaway. She may very well be a topic one day.

(28:02):
Greenaway was an illustrator and she was hired by Marcus
Worden Company, a publishing company in Belfast, Ireland that was
moving into the card market because they didn't want to
miss out on this new revenue. Kate's card illustrations, which
frequently featured children celebrating, are still reprinted commonly today. It's
easy to see why they're very cute. In nineteen fifteen,

(28:25):
a family business was started by Joyce Hall in Kansas City.
They printed their first Christmas card. As the business quickly grew,
Joyce's brothers also became part of the Hall company and
they began to focus less on the original plan of
postcards and more on holiday cards. Later, the company changed

(28:46):
its name to Hallmark Hallmark innovated and introducing the folded card.
Previous greeting cards had just been one flat card a
lot like a postcard, but the Hall brothers wanted to
add more space for a sender to write in the car.
They also started hiring well known artists to design cards,
including Salvadore Dolli. The company still has the original paintings

(29:09):
for card designs by Deli and its collection. Norman Rockwell
was also hired to design cards for the company, and
his continue to be printed with some regularity. I feel
like Salvador Dolli has been on the show a lot lately,
which is just fine by me. The US greeting card
industry became a significant employer, with an estimated forty factories

(29:33):
operating by the late nineteen twenties, and to keep this
new industry lucrative, businesses focused their marketing on the idea
the sending cards was an old tradition, even though it
was still pretty new. There were also charity card drives
to drum up interest and just get people in the
practice of buying cards. In those cases, consumers were encouraged

(29:54):
purchase cards knowing that the proceeds or a portion of
the proceeds would benefit a good cause. This practice really
solidified with the introduction of UNICEF's first holiday card in
nineteen forty nine, and charity cards have continued consistently ever since. Today,
the greeting card industry is in a unique position. On

(30:16):
the one hand, digital cards have cut into the market significantly.
On the other, the United States Chamber of Commerce says
there's some interesting growth in the industry. For one thing,
it's still huge. It's estimated to be a seven billion
dollar market annually. That is billion with a B. For another,
there's some interesting innovation going on within it. While Hallmark

(30:38):
and American Greetings are credited with a whopping eighty percent
market share, industry leaders note that the remaining slice of
the market is filled with smaller producers who are able
to get into the business because of the relatively low
startup costs, and a lot of those folks are doing
really creative things. According to the Greeting Card Art Association,

(31:01):
which is like a professional org for all these companies,
there are two things that have fueled a new wave
of greeting card interest in recent years, and the first
is the COVID nineteen pandemic, because as people were separated
from loved ones and close friends, the greeting card industry
is one of the few that actually had some growth
because people were seeking ways to stay connected that felt

(31:23):
more meaningful than simply sending a text. Another is that
millennials and Gen Z consumers have embraced greeting cards as
previous generations have lost interests. Millennials are now listed as
the largest consumer group of greeting cards. One theory about
this growth is that it feels sort of retro to
send cards, which has appeal to younger buyers. Another is

(31:47):
that there's some fresh diversity in the messaging and that
lets people share sentiments or laughed with loved ones through
a card that feels in line with their usual dynamic.
New holidays are also being represented. Some are old holidays
that didn't used to be associated with greeting cards, like Halloween.
Others reflect an expanded awareness of cultural diversity, like Diwali.

(32:11):
And then, of course there are newly created holidays like
Gallantines Day that have become popular and there are cards
to celebrate them. There's also a new availability of cards
that address more social and life moments, some of which
haven't historically gotten a lot of notice. On the card
aisle for sobriety or for a serious loss. For literally

(32:33):
any life event from puberty to gallbladder surgery, there is
a card. I have one that is like uh mad libs,
almost a lot of wild things you can choose from
about what you're sending your condolences for, and they're all
very silly. Yeah, uh yeah, we'll talk about interesting greeting

(32:54):
cards Friday. In the meantime, we're going to talk about
art again. Okay, but this is like some beautiful art
by one of our listeners, Oh yay, who claims that
they're not that great but is a fibber. This is
from our listener Kieren, who writes, Hello ladies. A bit
of a rambling note. But I recently decided that I

(33:15):
wanted to go back and improve upon my art education
and finally tackle learning some figure drawing. Unfortunately, my BFA
program was not stellar, so I missed out on a
lot of foundational skills. But there's no time like the
present to learn is I would love to be able
to do some fun and inclusive character design and storytelling someday.
I'm just starting as a February and am knee deep

(33:36):
in anatomy studies and have found that ballet dancers make
such excellent references to work from. That, of course, got
me down a whole rabbit hole of re listening to
the two part episodes on the history of ballet, as
well as the one on Jean Baptiste Lulli, which had
been so fun to re listen to while I draw.
I think It's safe to say at this point that
everything in life somehow connects back to one of your episodes,

(33:58):
and all of my friends in really are thoroughly sick
of me going ooh, there's a podcast episode about that.
Thank you so much for all of the education and
company you provided over the years. I also recently went
through a big move to a new town at the
start of this year, so having comfort media to lean
on in the transition has been essential. Thank you again
for all that you are and all that you do.
I hope your spring season is off to as positive

(34:20):
a start as possible. Questionably proportioned practice sketches attached. I
promise I will send better ones in future. These look
spectacular to me. I mean, I don't think these are banned.
They may be practice, but you're nailing it. Listen. We
love art. I love sporting artists. I love that ballet

(34:42):
was a good Dancers are a really good opportunity to
study the mechanics of the human body, which is very cool.
This also a little bit is going to relate to
something I'm going to talk about on Friday. So okay,
when we talk about human figure drawing, there is comedy coming.
Great Friday. If you would like to write to us,

(35:03):
you can do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
If you would like to see the show notes for
the episode, they are available at mystonhistory dot com. You'll
see all the sources we used. If you would like
to subscribe to the podcast and you haven't done so yet,
you can do that anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.

(35:27):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
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