flights of fancy

While sourcing materials to produce artwork for a commission at the Lewisham Hospital, I was very happy to see that when I searched for suppliers of chevron border envelopes, three of the four images that first came up were of my dailymades.

I have repeatedly been drawn to working with patterned envelope papers over the years. I used them as early as 2002 in a sound installation for Danielle Arnaud at the Museum of Garden History, and in another sound piece created for my first solo exhibition at MK gallery in Rotterdam. I have included  them since in the graphics on my website, and I like to think that I possibly have the largest collection of patterned envelope papers in the world.  Entering the collection in the Guinness Book of Records has been on my to do list for over a decade now and writing this will, hopefully, prompt me to do something about it.

Amongst all the envelopes in my collection, there is something I find particularly compelling about the chevron border airmail envelopes; they travel faster and longer distances than other envelopes, criss-crossing the globe like migratory birds, and weighing no more than some of these avian species either. In an age where most correspondence is done via email, chevron bordered envelopes convey a sense of romance and the exotic. Though cheap, readily available and instantly recognisable, they are full of the promise of distant places. For me, this sums up their enduring appeal...