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This set of five postcards, one each for Lakes Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, was created as a tribute to Curt Teich & Co., the firm that revolutionized the postcard industry in the 1930s with their dreamy, photographic, hand-retouched “Art-Colortone” linen cards. They’re all ready for a stamp and a few witty lines to bring a little old-school joy to the mailboxes of your friends and family.

While researching the Great Lakes for their Summer 2022 Field Notes Quarterly Edition, Field Notes stumbled across some intriguing postcards of the region from the 1930s. They knew they were on to something special when they discovered that the company behind these enormously popular postcards, Curt Teich & Co, was located—like them—in Chicago. On top of that, the largest collection of these postcards is housed at the famed Newberry Library,  just a mile or so east of Field Notes HQ.

A few days later, Jeffrey L. Meikle’s “Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation” arrived via parcel post. Meikle tells the whole story of the era, including an in-depth examination of the technologies and production processes that created these much-loved and frequently-collected cards. As Meikle describes, the company’s “vision now functions both as a powerful artifact of the cultural history of a particular era and as a powerful stimulus to nostalgic re-imaginings of the past.” Consider our set a typology of the Great Lakes.

A few days later, Jeffrey L. Meikle’s “Postcard America: Curt Teich and the Imaging of a Nation” arrived via parcel post. Meikle tells the whole story of the era, including an in-depth examination of the technologies and production processes that created these much-loved and frequently-collected cards. As Meikle describes, the company’s “vision now functions both as a powerful artifact of the cultural history of a particular era and as a powerful stimulus to nostalgic re-imaginings of the past.” Consider our set a typology of the Great Lakes.

Details:

• Proudly printed by the good people of Active Graphics, Cicero, Ill.
• Front: Neenah Classic Linen 100#C “Avon White” with a 5-color application of process-color plus “Teich Gold” soy-based Toyo UV inks.
• Back: Neenah Classic Linen 100#C “Avon White” with a thick, brute force, 1-color application of “Teich Navy” soy-based Toyo UV ink.
• Printed on a Komori Lithrone S40 40" 6-color offset printing press.
• Post Card dimensions are 5-1/2" × 3-1/2" (140mm × 89mm).
• FIELD NOTES uses only the Futura typeface family (Paul Renner, 1927) in its materials. Though you can see we snuck a little Memphis (Rudolf Wolf, 1929) into this product for historical accuracy.
• All FIELD NOTES paper products are printed and manufactured in the U.S.A.

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