Postcrossing Blog

Some years ago, I stumbled on an interesting project by Craig Giffen called The Human Clock, which is a clock that shows the time with pictures submitted by people. The way it works is, for every minute in a day the clock shows a photo that has been submitted by a random contributor, in a random place, using a number of different ways to show the time. For example:

The same developer also brought us a widget, The Human Calendar that maybe you’ve seen before on a blog or website. It’s shows the current date with people:

These days, Craig is working on a new project, The Mail Clock! It is basically the same idea of the Human Clock (a site that shows the time) but this time using mail items that he receives. Like this:

He’s looking for help to complete this new project, so if you have an extra postcard, head over to the project’s site for details on how to help. Remember to be creative!

We can’t wait to see the final result! :)

We’ve already told about the artist who spent several years mailing himself strange unwrapped objects. But it seems that the hobby of mailing oneself quirky objects through the postal services has antecedent roots, as writes John Tingey on a newly published book. “The Englishman who posted himself and other curious objects” is the story of a 19th century’s man and his passion for the postal services and their quirkiness. Here’s the synopsis:

The first impression of W. Reginald Bray (1879–1939) was one of an ordinary middle-class Englishman quietly living out his time as an accountant in the leafy suburb of Forest Hill, London. A glimpse behind his study door, however, revealed his extraordinary passion for sending unusual items through the mail.

In 1898, Bray purchased a copy of the Post Office Guide, and began to study the regulations published quarterly by the British postal authorities. He discovered that the smallest item one could post was a bee, and the largest, an elephant. Intrigued, he decided to experiment with sending ordinary and strange objects through the post unwrapped, including a turnip, a bowler hat, a bicycle pump, shirt cuffs, seaweed, a clothes brush, even a rabbit’s skull. He eventually posted his Irish terrier and himself (not together), earning him the name “The Human Letter.”

He also mailed cards to challenging addresses some in the form of picture puzzles, others sent to ambiguous recipients at hard to reach destinations all in the name of testing the deductive powers of the beleaguered mail carrier. Over time his passion changed from sending curios to amassing the world’s largest collection of autographs, also via the post. By the time he died in 1939, Bray had sent out more than thirty-two thousand postal curios and autograph requests.

The Englishman who posted himself and other curious objects is available at Amazon.com
Pray tell, what was the strangest thing you’ve ever posted? :)

And now, for something a bit different: Lenka Clayton and Michael Crowe are two creative artists with a very special goal – to send a personal handwritten letter to everyone in the world! Impossible? Most likely. Crazy? Perhaps. But it’s surely different, and they are doing their best to do it in a creative and mysterious way – they call it Mysterious Letters.

In April last year, they have sent handwritten letters to all 467 households in the Irish village of Cushendall – not bad for a start. And in November, they wrote 620 letters – all different and personal – to each home in Polish Hill (Pittsburgh, USA). Here’s what BBC had to say about it:

But they are not stopping here. Now they want to go even bigger and write to even more people!

This time, they are allowing anyone to get involved in their enthusiastic plan – they have setup their project at kickstarter.com so that people can donate towards it (if there aren’t enough supporters, the donation is returned).

In exchange for the donations, they are offering peculiar things – from allowing the supporters to choose a theme for the letters they will send, to actually receive handwritten letters from Michael and Lenka themselves. For the largest supporter level, they are even offering to hand deliver a letter to the supporter in person!

Even though it sounds a bit crazy, we love the creative way they are doing it all. You can find more information about the project at their Mysterious Letters blog and for details of how help them, check here.

A small town in Oregon (U.S.A.) is asking for postcards from all over the world. In return, they will send back their recently created postcards about their town. What else could we ask?

Here are the details:

I just wanted to invite all Postcrossers to contribute a postcard to an upcoming event:

Celebrating the Art of the Postcard

Help the Cornelius Post Office celebrate the joy of small works of art and personal communication. Cornelius is a small town in Western Oregon, known for hazelnuts, blueberries and vineyards. Here at the local post office we noticed that for visitors there was no way of sending a local postcard to share the cool things about this unique little town. We’re working on that! Share your postcard with us and get one of the ones we are producing!

Exhibition: Begins January 11, 2010 in the lobby of the Cornelius, OR Post Office.

Make sure to include your return address to receive one of our postcards in return and to be included in the list of participants.

Send your postcards to:

Postmaster
1639 Baseline Street
Cornelius, OR 97113
USA

Follow us at: http://postcardmailart.blogspot.com/

Have you sent yours?

Do you display your postcards in your wall? I mean, on your REAL wall?

We know some of you do. But Andy in the U.K. decided to go extra an mile with the wall concept and created the 'My REAL wall' project. Here’s what he has to say about it:

I am a teacher based in London, uk and love photography, travelling and writing.

A few months ago I closed my facebook account and since then I have decided only to receive REAL post, instead of letting people post on a virtual wall.

Whenever I receive REAL post I stick it up on my REAL wall and take a photograph of it, which I then upload to my website, www.myrealwall.com.

And he has photos of many different walls too! So go check it out!