Marissa Brassfield
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In her curious series of playfully-addressed envelopes, Harriet Russell issues forth a challenge to Royal Mail postal workers: How far are you willing to go to deliver my mail? The illustrator wrote 130 letters to herself, cleverly disguising the addresses on the envelopes using dot-to-dot drawings, crossword puzzles, cartoons, and even color perception tests. While we tend to think of postal workers with disdain, her results were astonishing—only ten letters weren’t delivered. What’s more, Harriet Russell helped continue a family tradition she wasn’t aware of until she’d already begun sending the letters, according to the Independent. Her work, combined with that of her family, has since been published in a book called “Envelopes: A Puzzling Journey Through the Royal Mail.”  Ms Russell was unwittingly resurrecting a family tradition first begun by her great-great grandfather Henry Ponsonby, a private secretary to Queen Victoria and a veteran of the Crimean War. This eminent forebear embellished letters to his children at Eton with a series of illustrations in which he concealed the school's address. It was a family quirk continued by his son, Arthur Ponsonby, a pacifist who went on to be Labour MP for Sheffield Brightside before his elevation to the House of Lords.
(independent)References: harrietrussell, independent Filed In: |
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