volland ◆ redux & farewell

In 1914, Rachael Elmer, a successful artist and book illustrator, decided to create post cards for the city she loved and had adopted as her home. Her efforts would result in the first American published, artist-drawn post cards.

Before ... marriage, Rachael had studied for several semesters at the New York Art Students League with eminent professors, the likes of Childe Hassam, Winston Cox, and John Henry Twachtman [and arthur wesley dow!]. Now she was using what she learned from the giants of American Impressionism to create her own views of New York City.





In 1914, after an exhausting search, Mrs. Elmer found the P. F. Volland Company of Chicago as a publisher for her post cards. The twelve-card set named the New York Art Lover's series, was packaged in an oaktag folder with a twist-string tie, and within weeks of publication the cards were selling in many upscale New York City boutiques and souvenir shops for 25 cents.

Mrs. Elmer's second set of post cards was published in Burlington, Vermont, in 1916 as part of the Biennial Celebration of the Association of Women Painters, Artists and Sculptors. The set included six creative woodcut block prints, each with a unique post card back. The views are the Times Building, the Stadium at City College, the Statue of Liberty, Grant's Tomb, the Woolworth Building and a very imaginative image of the Brooklyn Bridge.


Eighteen post cards—the sum total of Rachael Elmer's post card artistry. With that effort she changed the world of American post cards.

Along with others in the Robinson family, Mrs. Elmer is considered an American pioneer in the truest sense. She brought beauty to the black and white world of the American post card. She died on February 12, 1919, a victim of the Spanish Influenza epidemic. 1

E. B. White, "TERSE VERSE," The New Yorker, April 20, 1935, p. 32 April 20, 1935 Issue

ONWARD & UPWARD WITH THE ARTS about the greeting card business. A little old lady who lived in Louisiana, set out from her home in the south and journeyed all the way to Joliet to see Mr. P. F. Volland, of the Volland Co. She presented him with a motto for Washington's Birthday. Mr. Volland, impressed with the length of the journey, accepted it and drew up a contract on royalty basis. The motto flopped. The authoress, back in Louisiana, received no pay and began to suffer from delusions of fraud. After some months she again entered the office of Mr. Volland, and shot him dead. 2

painting the boats: dow 1

Colour variation has always fascinated me. There is a peculiar pleasure in seeing the same design appear in different colours—the design seems to have a soul in each colour-scheme, said Arthur Wesley Dow.

The Ipswich sailors painted their boats in bright hues, using different colours for the inside, outside and streak. They had a limited palette—dark blue, canary yellow, orange, orange-red, several greens, black, and white. They were not content to keep a colour scheme very long, in fact they varied it from year to year, perhaps borrowing one another's paint pots when they freshened up the boats in the spring.

These boats were like colour prints as they lay on the shore in the dark shadow of the willows, or slanted in companies down the heaps of white clam shells—and the tide and the sailors always kept new combinations going.

Under the spell of these, and the old picture books, I tried to make wood engravings to colour by hand, but it was not until I became acquainted with Japanese prints that I found a simple way of creating colour variations. The Boston Museum's vast collection showed me every possibility of this art.

I experimented with the Japanese process, choosing as subjects the shore of Ipswich River with the boats, old houses, bridge and willows, printing many colour variations of each motif.

The special advantages of this art-craft are, first of all, colour quality, then colour variation. In painting, the water-colour settles into the paper, but in a wood-block print it lies upon the tops of the fibres allowing the luminous tone of the paper to shine through.

In this it is like the colour of the best pottery, say Chinese of the Sung dynasty, where the tones lie lightly over a luminous under colour. The old fresco paintings have a similar elusive glowing effect.

Colour variation I have already touched upon. Mr. Fenollosa remarked that this process "utilizes the lost chances." A painting shows forth a single colour-idea that the artist brings out of his mind. There may be many others floating there, but they cannot all be made visible without infinite labour.

With the wood blocks once cut he may seize them all—there is no limit. This is why some wood-block printers will not destroy them. No two prints need ever be exactly alike. The slight variations give a special personal character to each print.

From that day to this I have made wood-block colour prints.






dow's importance, during his lifetime, anyway, included his teaching. we'll look more at that soon, but first: the names of some of his students.

Alvin Langdon Coburn

Rachel Robinson Elmer

May and Frances Gearhart

Edna Boies Hopkins

Gertrude Kasebier

Dorothy Lathrop

Pedro Lemos (later working as Pedro DeLemos)

Georgia O'Keeffe

Mary Frances Overbeck

Margaret Jordan Patterson

Clarence H. White

...and Kate Cameron Simmons and Pamela Colman Smith and M. Louise Stowell and Max Weber (At the Pratt Institute, he studied with Arthur Wesley Dow from whom he learned to see forms as visual relationships rather than objects) and so many many more.

on his methods and influence? that's next....

blueinall