Postcrossing Blog

Hola Postcrossers! We hope you had a wonderful Easter! We found another interesting topic about postcards: Kaj Stenvall and his famous Duck.

Lots of Postcrossers have been emailing us about this amazing and creative Finnish painter and his wonderful masterpieces that frequently feature a duck in many settings and characterizations.

Stenvall’s paintings are now being used in postcards everywhere. So you either have seen some of these postcards lately but didn’t know who the painter was or you’re familiar with the painter but do not have any idea why he paints the way he does.

If you don’t know anything about this painter at all, read along because we’re sure you’ll find him and his paintings very interesting. Who knows, you’ll even want a postcard with his famous duck paintings.

It all started in 1989 when Stenvall made a few paintings featuring a duck that looks very similar to Walt Disney’s Donald Duck. However, his duck’s appearance has increasingly moved away from the Disney character’s guise through the years. The duck’s gender, age, and skin color have all shifted from one painting to another. The Duck has slowly become its own character.

According to Stenvall himself, the Duck is a symbol of humanity. Contrary to popular belief, the Duck isn’t Stenvall’s alter ego nor does it serve any purpose in delivering some kind of message from Stenvall. According to Stenvall’s official website,

It’s simply a jumping off point into the multidimensional world of Stenvall’s art, to draw the viewer deep inside his paintings and then, to step aside.

Isn’t that genius thinking?

What’s even better is that the duck makes viewers think about its purpose and imagine things that Stenvall himself wouldn’t even think about his own paintings.

Challenge yourself and your postcard recipients by sending them one of Stenvall’s paintings. Let’s see what stories you guys can come up with just by looking at the duck and its surroundings.

If you want to see more of Stenvall’s art, visit his website here.

We aren’t sure if these postcards are available online but we found a couple at this website: Art Unlimited.

If any of you have any idea where your fellow Postcrossers can get one online, please comment on this blog post and leave a link! Thanks a lot!

Till next time!

On the 13&14th earlier this month another large Postcrossing meetup took place, this time in cold Tampere in Finland. The meetup had over 25 Postcrossers with some coming from Germany and The Netherlands.

Here’s what happened described by Soili, one of the attendees:

Some of the guests arrived Tampere on Friday already and they spent some time in a pre-meeting in the night life of the city. The main meeting day was on Saturday. The day was cloudy and streets were slushy but it wasn’t too cold. Some snowflakes came down from the sky every now and then. At 11 am one part of the group went to visit the Tampere cathedral and another part gathered in a postcard shop. I myself arrived Tampere later than the others and the first thing when I got there I went to that shop to check out if they had left any postcards for me. :D Then I phoned them to find out their location. So, we met each other in Moomin Shop downstairs of Tampere library. Those who visited the cathedral were there already, too.

Then we went upstairs to the library cafe and had a cup of coffee and tea. Then we started writing and signing postcards to fellow postcrossers. Previous evening I had prewritten and stamped some postcards already but since I didn’t have any Tampere postcards at home I had to write them at the cafe. It took a while to sign all the 354 postcards. Postcards kept coming endlessly to our table. Luckily, my user name is short enough to write it over and over again. :D After about two and half hours they were all signed. We put postcards to a mailbox next to the Moominvalley to get a special Moomin cancellation to them.

Our Dutch friends gave to the participants delicious gifts they had brought all the way from the Netherlands. Thanks again! Also recycling is in! Anyone could bring unsed postcards they didn’t want to keep anymore to the meeting. So anyone could take as many postcards as they wanted. Someone’s trash is someone else’s treasure. I found many beautiful postcards in the trash piles. :D

At this point some of the participants left the group. The rest of us headed for an Italian restaurant Bella Roma. On our way to the restaurant we popped in another postcard shop to buy low-price postcards. I never miss a chance to buy postcards because in the village where I live the postcard assortment is poor and they are also expensive. So, I left the shop with 60 postcards. :D

At least I was hungry when we got to the restaurant. Bella Roma is a cosy Italian ristorante. Pastas and pizzas were delicious as well the desserts like real Italian gelato (ice cream). Yummy! I was stuffed when I finished the dinner.

After 7 pm it was time to say goodbye. Some went home, some for a drink in a bar. After a couple of hours’ driving I was back at home at 10.30 pm. It was a long day but worth it.

It is great to meet other postcrossers in the real life. Some of them I had already met earlier because this was my 8th Postcrossing meeting already. It is wonderful to get to know new people, too. The disadvantage of a meeting this big is that there isn’t necessarily time to talk to everyone but maybe next time.

Luckily enough, Finland’s FI-500000 was sent from this meetup with meeting signatures. Congratulations too all Finnish members for the achievement!

Don’t forget to check the forum for updates in the upcoming meetups!

PS: For more photos of this meetup, check here, here, here, here, here and here :).

Postcrossing received this wonderful article written by Markus (aspen), who recently interviewed Geoffrey (misterteapot, from Australia) and Kati (kilona, from Finland).
If you haven’t heard the good news yet, Geoffrey and Kati met through Postcrossing, after which they fell in love and got married. They’re now living in Finland. Here’s the story:


Start postcrossing. You might get married

Postcrossing is responsable of this, laughs Geoffrey meaning his marriage with a Finn, Kati. It would not have happened if they both hadn’t been postcrossers. But what are postcrossers? Postcrossing means sending postcards to all over the world. If you send a card to Germany, you might receive one from a Brazilian postcrosser. Why? Because people want to receive real mail. This kind of hobby brought the Reynolds together. “How else could we have met? I can’t think of any other way!” says Geoffrey who has moved to Finland. The couple is crazy about postcards and Geoffrey has to close his eyes everytime there’s a post office or a card shop near. Otherwise he would go shopping.

Thousands of addresses

I have hundreds of addresses of postcrossers tells Kati and shows her black address book. Geoffrey has saved thousands of addresses to his computer. They send cards every here and there just to make other postcrossers happy. You can do postcrossing with smaller contribution also. Geoffrey joined Postcrossing after he had heard of it from his friends. It sounded a fun idea and I was curious. I noticed soon how nice people are! I noticed also how little I know about the world. In the USA some families even teach geography to their children via postcrossing. A genious idea, praises Geoffrey.

Translation done by Soili (soili). For those of you that read Finnish, the original version can be viewed in this scan of the article.

Once again, congratulations Geoffrey and Kati! :)