Envelope Art

Living in a time of instant access through electronic communication, it is hard to remember the importance of letters in the past. For those with family living abroad, the post office was a lifeline. Normally the envelope had no more than an address but for some few individuals there was more involved. The hundreds of envelopes executed by W.H. Chignell (1841–1933), never before published, excel in this eld: indeed they are artistic endeavours in their own right.

Chignell began married life as an organist and choir master rather than a professional artist. He was the father of seven children and after the break-up of the family home, several emigrated abroad and others moved to disparate parts of the UK. They kept diaries, wrote journals or in one case published a book on life in Papua New Guinea. These contain descriptions of what it was like to receive letters and perhaps even more exciting to have ‘home thoughts from abroad’ evoked on the envelopes. It is wonderfully fortuitous that so many survive, a selection of which are published in this volume.