Department of Ephemera
Safety Envelopes
I know when it started, my collecting the patterned insides of safety envelopes, because I’ve got this photo, dating back to 2007, of the original messy pile gathered in San Francisco. I’d imagined doing an independent radio piece about them that never gained traction with any producers, which dulled and eventually dissipated my interest.
I never could find out much about who created or chose those designs—not that I tried very hard. But I had pictured going to a factory somewhere in the Midwest, maybe interviewing a long-retired designer replaced by a computer program or the guy running the paper press. Recording the sounds of printing, cutting, and boxing safety envelopes, and assembling an audio collage that included the details of my minor obsession with them, plus reverberating echoes of what constitutes “safe.”
At some point long after I’d given up the idea, I dumped those envelopes in with the recycling. But as bills continued to arrive, another pile replaced it, and—like so many things I didn’t have the opportunity to discard—is probably buried in storage along with everything else from my San Francisco apartment when I had it packed up by a colleague and shipped east during the first year of Covid.
Here in New York, it’s the woodgrain-looking ones that got me started again. (I mean, c’mon—they’re cool, right?) And though I have no particular plans to do anything with them, I’ve trimmed a section off of any new patterned envelope that comes my way.
I find the blues and grays soothing, the patterns not really like yet somehow reminiscent of crisp men’s tailored shirts, the little pile on my shelf never failing to make me smile for no reason I can explain. I just find them appealing—whatever that says about me.
Okay—that is just crazy and amazing! What are the odds? (Good, apparently!) Thanks so much, Lisa, for sharing your story and description of the factory et al. I started thinking about those envelopes 3000 miles away, and all the answers turned out to be here (or pretty close to here) in my own NY backyard. So wild! And quite wonderful too. Who knew there was love and marriage involved? 😁❤️
How funny that you are writing about envelopes, when that is the business my husband's family was in for 3 generations! My father worked in the Long Island factory, trouble-shooting the up to 200-foot(!) long machines. A roll of paper began to unfurl at one end, and as it traveled, it was printed, cut, glued, windowed, folded, and sent into the hands of an operator who boxed them. Some envelopes were die cut...if you carefully unglue the diagonal seams, you'll see the shape that stacks of paper were cut into. These then were run through a different type of machine to be printed, glued, and folded. To your point about the safety printing: The factory had a full art department. That's where I gathered many of my graphic design skills. (I also "gathered" my future husband the first summer I worked at the factory.) The end rolls of paper became indispensable to my PTA for painting huge decorations upon, and the unfolded die cut envelope extras were always on hand for my kids' art projects. For a large part of my life I was surrounded by envelopes! So, if you have any questions about those paper marvels, ask away!