We have to find ways to keep plowing forward and I'm starting Papergreat's 17th calendar year with some short posts about items I've come across during some recent sorting and decluttering of family ephemera. Every January brings a fresh urge to purge stuff for sanity's sake. I hope this year sees more meaningful progress by me in that regard.
This is a greeting card that was designed to be a bookmark, if you detach the front cover of the card. It's stained and there's a tear at the bottom, but I've fixed that with tape and I'm going to put this in my pile of bookmarks and toss the rest of the card, along with the generic cursive message.
The bookmark was produced by Yorkraft and the card is printed with the following explanatory message: "Hand colored Book-Marks (Lese Ziechen), similar to this, with designs derived from religious symbolism, were used to mark the place many old Pennsylvania Dutch Bibles and Hymnals."
For some information about Yorkraft we turn to the York Daily Record and a 2016 Universal York blog post by June Lloyd. The company dates to at least the mid 1940s and manufactured "decorative signs and novelties, including Pennsylvania Dutch trinkets." Lloyd's post cites a 1946 advertisement that states:
"YORKRAFT Pennsylvania Dutch… Greeting Cards and Gift items, for inspiration, draw upon a rich store of folklore and folk-arts of the Pennsylvania Dutch who have probably contributed more than any other group, to the Early American Folk Arts. Yorkraft has caught the charm and spirit of their decoration and design, their quaint speech and humor and their picturesque dress and customs, which still persist in Pennsylvania and to some extent in other parts of the country settled by Pennsylvania Dutch folks."
There are hundreds of Yorkraft items currently for sale on eBay, some dating to the late 1970s. I'm actually a little surprised that this is the company's first-ever mention on Papergreat. Items range from a set of blank Amish-themed notecards for less than $10 to faux stained-glass display pieces to Pennsylvania Dutch recipe booklets to a 1969 "Make Love Not War" wooden sign that's pretty damn cool and is listed for $329.99.
