Lisa Norman, independent artist.

I'm impressed with Lisa Norman!  She grew up 5 hours north of Fort Collins, a town of five thousand people.  She worked her way through art college in Denver, married a cowboy, specializes in western art and runs quite a respectable business selling it.

Her notecards are gorgeous; I trimmed the front of the card and re-sent it as a postcard!

http://www.imageswest.com/online-store-notecards#prettyPhoto

SATURN PRESS

This is a two person hand-press business that operates on a remote Maine island.  Their cards are beautiful to hold and behold.

http://www.stationersguild.org/news/industry-news/saturn-press-a-lesson-in-integrity/

Saturn Press does not have a website and no email.  The best way to contact them is to mail them a letter to the following address:

Saturn Press
Post Office Box 368
Swan’s Island, Maine 04685

Jane explained that they support “snail mail” and the best way to get their undivided attention is to take the time to write them a personal note.  

http://www.luxepaperie.com/saturnpress.html

http://www.swansisland.org/

East Corinth, VT

This town is basically the intersection between "Chicken Farm" and "Village Road" 90 minutes north of Brattleboro.  Photographer Allen Karsh has some of the best pictures that bring out the gorgeous church steeple.  He must have spent a lot of time for these pictures.

VT business

BRATTLEBORO VT has a few blocks downtown dedicated to Sunday-Driver tourists.  They have bookshops, two LP shops, cafes (Amy's Bakery is delicious), printed mugs and sweat-shirts with, hurray, post-card racks! "Galanes Vermont Shop" ( http://galanesvtshop.com ) carries post-cards from two micro-businesses:

MAYER PHOTO GRAPHICS 

http://vermont2you.com

"Thirty years ago, photographer and Austrian born, Alois Mayer was taken with the natural scenic beauty of the Green Mountain state...  Vermont's very lifestyle can be sampled through these images captured and assembled in book and calendar format.  "

VERMONT ILLUSTRATING

http://www.vermontillustrating.com

http://www.paulrezendes.com/contact/

http://www.allenkarshimages.com/contact.html

http://www.johnknoxphoto.ca

"Vermont Illustrating, LLC is a family owned business which has been distributing postcards and souvenirs throughout Vermont & the Adirondack New York regions for the past 5 years."

Vermont Illustrating

(A) is not Vermont but New Hampshire

(B) employs non-Vermont photographers ( who themselves have sophisticated websites)

(C) off-shores their contracts to Italy.

Neither of their websites mention postcards!

Compared side-by-side, the differences between their websites tell us a lot:  

vermontillustrating.com has technical problems, such as a 10Meg thumbnail on the front page.  They hide their mailing address.  They don't let us order.  With their mention of New York business, they are obviously B2B, business to business.

vermont2you.com has a clear story, consistent branding, and easy ordering, obviously B2C, business to consumer.  Their business address is upstate VT.

Mama's Boy takes the cake

"Mama's Boy" is a favorite restaurant in our neighborhood.  They have postcards promoting their drinks and one dessert.  However,  I believe that a QUARTER CUP of Red Food Coloring is an enormous mistake...

http://www.mamasboyct.com/

original kids by tanya alexis

Kid's clothes imported from Japan can be found at "Trico Field" in SoHo, 65 W Houston.  We go there for gift shopping, and its nice to see how well the store arranges everything.

http://www.tricofield.net/

Something they had in 2011 was a stack of postcards promoting "original kids by tanya alexis", who is still taking care of business:

http://www.originalkidsbyta.com

https://www.facebook.com/originalKIDSbyTA

the amazing life of Marcel Duchamp

This entry about a stamp.  Its a very large stamp, so it needs a large postcard.

Its part of the USPS sheet "Modern Art in America", but Duchamp was French born and he made this painting in France.  And it became famous in America when it was shown in NYC, where Americans called it "Explosion in a Shingle Factory" and a magazine offered a ten dollar reward for anyone who could "find the lady."   But its now at the Philadelphia Art Museum, so it is allowed on the stamp.

Personally, I think this picture is a condensation of another painting from 30 years before, "The Golden Stairs".

Duchamp himself has a biography with details that are difficult to believe.  He seems to have stopped painting a few years after this in order to play chess in Argentina.  Yes!  He became a "chess journalist"!  Samuel Beckett wrote about Duchamp in the 1957 play "Endgame".  Duchamp moved to Greenwich Village in 1942 and gained American citizenship in 1955.

 

http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/51449.htmlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Stairs

and by the way, that single stamp is offered today on eBay for $2.37 ( +$1.17 shipping expense!)