OLD LETTERS IN THE ATTIC

Biro Portraits on Antique envelopes by Mark Powell. See interview here

MY GRANDMOTHER'S LOVE LETTERS by Hart Crane

There are no stars tonight
But those of memory.
Yet how much room for memory there is
In the loose girdle of soft rain.

There is even room enough
For the letters of my mother's mother,
Elizabeth,
That have been pressed so long
Into a corner of the roof
That they are brown and soft,
And liable to melt as snow.

Over the greatness of such space
Steps must be gentle.
It is all hung by an invisible white hair.
It trembles as birch limbs webbing the air.

And I ask myself:

"Are your fingers long enough to play
Old keys that are but echoes:
Is the silence strong enough
To carry back the music to its source
And back to you again
As though to her?"

Yet I would lead my grandmother by the hand
Through much of what she would not understand;
And so I stumble. And the rain continues on the roof
With such a sound of gently pitying laughter.

See more portraits on Mark Powell's Flickr photo stream here.

"I was given an envelope that was sent from the front line in World War 1. It captivated me that this may have been the last thing ever written by this soldier. I find the envelopes with stamp collectors and the cost depends on the stamp which of course doesn't interest me. I like the history and scars of travel with the envelope." -  Mark Powell

Michael Douglas Jones

Variation on a theme of letters from Poland by Beata Wehr

Rachel Phillips

"In her series Field Notes, photographs blend the domesticity of home with the joy of wilderness, the natural world. The paper houses are built from letters, postcards and envelopes saved through the decades in old shoeboxes by her grandparents and discovered in their attic a few years ago. The images are printed on old envelopes collected from around the world; artifacts from the last centuries." - Penopticon Gallery

Rachel Phillips unique wet transfer pigment prints on vintage envelopes. 

 Joanne Teasdale (images fused on glass, steel wire, steel plate). See website here

Joanne Teasdale

Letter from Eugene Delacroix to his paint dealer.

....and the piece de resistance 
the illustrated love letters of Henry Moore to his mistress

 Love letters from Henry Moore to his mistress. 

"I also delight in the way a shy restrained 
letter can reveal the writer's feelings thanks
to one word he or she couldn't hold back, 
flying off like a reckless butterfly, landing -- 
it knows the exact spot -- in the corner of 
the reader's mouth, as a quivering smile, 
trembling at the premonition of a secret 
love that has in fact been avowed." 

-- Agnes Desarthe, from Chez Moi

 The Gorgeous Nothings is an art book as much as a poetry book, featuring full-color facsimiles of 52 of Emily Dickinson's envelope poems.  

In this short life
that only lasts an hour
merely
How much  -- How
little -- is 
within our
power.

- Emily Dickinson