Ruination & Despair

At the kind suggestion of one of the fine merchants who purvey our wholesome and uplifting products, we have expanded our popular line of notorious checkbox cards with a design specifically for graduation.

It is that time of year, after all.

We trust this card will serve its purpose without causing fainting fits, gastro-intestinal distress, or regrettable outbreaks of violence. Of course, should we prove mistaken on any of these points, we disclaim all legal liability.
 

As consumer demand for our notorious checkbox cards appears almost insatiable, we have produced another thank you note along those very lines.

We realize that “Misbegotten sea creature” is unlikely to appeal to everyone, but we hope at least some of you will feel an overmastering need to purchase it. The illustration depicts an aquatic specimen reportedly sighted along the French Riviera between Antibes and Nice in 1562. And very handsome it is, too (assuming you go in for that sort of thing).

Just in time for Valentine’s Day, we bring you a bit of sentimental fluff. Well, assuming you consider snails fluffy.

Our latest blank notecard features a quotation that pretty much sums up Voltaire’s Candide (1759) and its mockery of Leibniz’s philosophical optimism. The card also pretty well sums up our general attitude here at Archelaus. Just for fun, we are making it available in the original French, for anyone who might prefer it so.

The illustration is from John Sterling Kingsley, ed., The Riverside Natural History (Cambridge, Mass., 1888). It depicts a slender loris (stenops gracilis), a nocturnal primate from southern India and Sri Lanka.

Given the success of our notorious checkbox cards, it was surely only a matter of time before management would demand a checkbox Valentine. And now that time has come. Mind you, I’m not sure they were expecting the result to feature wild pigs, but I am arguing that we have a lucrative opportunity here to fill an empty market niche.

The illustration (like that of our “Peruvian llama” birthday card), is taken from that excellent seventeenth-century compendium, Edward Topsel, The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (London, 1658).

It’s been awhile since we’ve released any new cards, so the inauguration of this blog seems like a good excuse to dust off a couple of designs I’ve been meaning to finish whenever I had a spare moment. The first, “Never less alone,” features a contemplative quotation from Edward Gibbon (1737-94), the great English historian, ironist, and author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. This card is a good example of an idea that would never work as a notecard but remains a possibility as an Archelaus postcard.

The illustration is by Gustave Doré (1832-83), a French artist whose work we’ve used before for the notecards “Happiness” and “Fatherhood.”

The second card, “Die rich,” employs a tart quotation from the English satirist Henry Fielding (1707-54), who is best known for the picaresque novel Tom Jones. This card has particular poignancy for Archelaus employees, given that our Founder, Proprietor, and Maximum Leader regards not spending money as something approaching a religious principle.

The illustration is by James Montgomery Flagg (1877-1960), once one of America’s top illustrators. For another of our postcards featuring Flagg, see “Life is a theater.”