When Karen shared with me this mail knowledge gaining opportunity, I knew I was in. I love Naked Mail.
What is naked mail? Simply put, naked mail is mail without packaging or a cover.The session promised to educate us about naked mail’s intriguing history, how it’s easy to send our own unique items through the mail, and creative ways to make our own naked letters. Fun stuff.We heard from three panelists, the first being Alison Bazylinski, an Assistant Curator at the National Postal Museum. Alison shared the history of naked mail and why it was used and how.Cost was a huge factor in keeping mail coverless. The price was based on how many sheets of paper the letter was and how far it had to travel. It was expensive.The National Postal Museum’s collection holds a range of unusual examples of objects sent through the mail sans boxes or envelopes and Alison shared many of them, to my delight. This letter, from 1774 was folded in such a way as to keep secret its content while remaining only one sheet (which we learned how to do later in the program).This postcard was crafted from a man's shirt cuff. So clever!Alison also shared that it wasn't just postal customers who liked to mail unique coverless items, postal employees did too. This 1895 tramp bucket traveled the country, gathering postmarks of places it had been.Employees sent this doll's head (which she believed probably began as a complete figure) around the country for years. Even mail carriers love mail!The second panelist was Maggie Sigle, the Volunteer and Intern Program Manager at the National Postal Museum, who gave us guidance on the proper way to send naked mail.She was a wealth of information and let us know that there is no USPS requirement to have mail in a package. When describing why people send naked mail she said "to surprise and delight the recipient". So very, very true.The final (and most anticipated by me) panelist was Bel Mills, a collage artist and book designer who, under the name of Scrap Paper Circus, upcycles vintage paper and common mail materials such as return business envelopes and cancelled stamps. Bel was there to teach us three unique folds to keep our letters to one page, sans envelopes. Oh man, what fun!
This fold was my favorite. What a wonderful hour of gaining knowledge shared by some interesting women. I now love mail even more! Fun stuff.
"I'm pretty sure people are going to start writing letters again
once the email fad passes."
-Willie Geist
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