Ruination & Despair

We have released our handsome and exciting catalog for 2010. Wholesale buyers are welcome to request a copy!

This time it’s Orange Tree Imports, a specialty store in Madison, which decided it could not continue without our fine products. Upon hearing the good news this afternoon, the flunkies in our state-of-the-art fulfilment facility in the depths of the cellar paused only to allow themselves to be whipped into a frenzy before packaging and shipping the order within the hour!

Archelaus regrets to announce that at the 22nd annual International Greeting Card Awards (or “LOUIEs”) on Monday night our beloved Egyptian mongoose, a finalist in the category “Special Occasion – Everyday, $3.50 & Below,” failed to take the gold. Our anonymous spokesperson took the setback philosophically: “Are we disappointed? Well, more disappointed than surprised. Indeed, arguably this defeat restores the natural order of things, which had been badly overturned by the selection of an Archelaus card as a finalist in the first place.”

Archelaus would like to congratulate Nick Wroblewski of Artists to Watch, as designer of the winning card.

“While not our cup of tea perhaps,” our spokesperson conceded, “the winning card features very handsome artwork and a quotation from Oliver Wendell Holmes, so losing to it does not represent the perplexing humiliation that defeat by a less appealing card would have.”

In more cheerful news, Archelaus’s poster for the LOUIE awards dinner was one of five (out of seventeen) selected for display at the event itself, where reportedly it was the subject of favorable comment.

As a finalist in the 22nd annual International Greeting Card Awards competition, Archelaus was invited to submit a poster for the awards dinner, based on this year’s theme of “Go for the gold!” Here is what Cadwalader came up with, using an illustration by the great Edmund Dulac (1882-1953) to what I think is very good effect.