It is uncommon to find a Saul Steinberg Christmas card that passed through the holiday mails and was saved, but in the case of this 1948 card--one of a series of seven black-and-white holiday cards created by the artist and produced by the Museum of Modern Art from 1945 through 1951--it took a much more exotic route. Steinberg's Santa went through international mails in order to reach an absent family member, Edward O. Douglas, Jr., on a round-the-world cruise. Edward was a passenger aboard the Brigantine Yankee, a steel-hulled schooner which at this time was making its fourth world tour in 11 years, from Gloucester, Mass. on Nov. 2, 1947, westward via the Panama Canal, around the Cape of Good Hope and back to Gloucester by May 1, 1949. The Yankee not only earned a detailed and fascinating write-up in Wikipedia, but it appeared on the cover of National Geographic in December 1959. Even more impressive, the schooner was the subject of a 1966 television special, Voyage of the Brigantine Yankee, scored by Elmer Bernstein and narrated by Orson Welles. While it's not clear from the poorly struck postmarks where the card was mailed from and when in December it was sent, the card, paying double the 25c airmail rate, appears to have caught up with their son at Beira, Mozambique on or shortly after Dec. 14, 1948.
Steinberg's card, appropriately, received generous holiday treatment. Mr. & Mrs. Douglas not only contributed a lengthy, gossipy letter (in the voice of Mom) to their son that covers almost every inch inside the card (and pretty much obscures the printed museum text), but Mom hand-colored the Steinberg Santa: "Don't you love it? I added the color & this was my first so I think I have done the others better--with a lighter touch." One wonders if any of the other Douglas mailings have survived, and what Steinberg would have thought of Mrs. Douglas (or anyone else) embellishing his pen & ink work, though I think he certainly would have approved of his Santa vacationing in Africa.
Note: "Don't you love it?" My thanks to David from Manhattan for introducing me to this long-forgotten Christmas card by Saul Steinberg. This is his 59th contribution to the blog. I'd still like to see what the Santa card looks like in unadulterated black and white, the way Steinberg drew it. Help me out with this, if you can. I can't find an image anywhere.
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