Hand-Drawn And Painted Victorian Covers

An astonishing selection of (mostly) Victorian hand-drawn envelopes from a forthcoming Spink sale

https://d3ums4016ncdkp.cloudfront.n...34/18034.pdf

((((Ramsay had great taste in collecting these.All gems!!)))
Some are little masterpieces...

Aren't they just stunning!!

I recently received a hard copy catalogue of the Chartwell Australian States & Commonwealth and saw the advert for the Ramsay sale towards the back. Another saved for my files.

I occasionally add rough and ready drawings to cards etc, but I might have a crack at a couple of envelopes - not at this level, though!

These covers are different but have any of you seen the hand carved wooden pictorial postcard in the Warther museum at Dover Ohio? Perhaps mooney Warthers greatest achievement was carving a stamp that the USPS accepted in the mail.
like GeoffHa I might try illustrating an envelope, If I do a good sketch I'll scan it and print more envelopes.....But when do I ever send Mail?

A well known post card with a Picasso drawing sent too his friend
Apollinaire sold in Germany in 2015 for 166,000 Euros...


Another one:
https://www.artcurial.com/fr/lot-p-...905-1489-240


https://www.christies.com/lotfinder...details.aspx

These are really great, though I might imagine it would be difficult to find many these days that are not already in collections. Also, I would be a bit nervous about paying much for one given that at least a few of them appear to be done in a way that might be difficult to prove that they were done at the time the sender mailed them rather than at some point later.

If you don't mind black ink only and perhaps fronts only (and not by famous artists), there are a fair number around, though not seen in the US much.

Posthumous drawings are a problem but blacklight would show up fakery from about the 1960s to date in most cases. There are also photospectrometer-type guns that report the chemical content of paint, different from c.1900 to the present. That should likely work for ink. It's an expensive gizmo but art experts and probably stamp experts have them.

Has anyone tried sending a rebus letter recently and expected it to get to its destination?