This Is Just To Say

Design Observer posted a link to a wonderful gallery of artists’ Christmas cards at the Smithsonian. Click on the big image, then make sure you click through to Dan Flavin’s minimal masterpiece. I am surprised they didn’t include this, from the Florence Knoll Bassett papers, inspired by the Erwin Hauer concrete screens installed at new husband Harry Hood Bassett’s First National Bank & Trust Company (designed by Chuck Bassett, no relation, of SOM).

It wasn’t for Christmas, but rather congratulations on their marriage, but the gallery also made me think of this lovely note from Charles and Ray Eames to Bassetts, on the occasion of their marriage, also at the Smithsonian. Ephemera like this makes me wish I could have been friends with the mid-century designers about which I often write. Though my friends are pretty crafty: they installed plastic swans and ivy on our car in lieu of a Just Married sign, in keeping with my wedding palette of white and green.