Lengthy stay the Christmas card – a ritual that feels more and more endangered in our digital age. The straightforward act of placing pen to paper and sending needs inked in black or blue is, in a phrase of on the spot messages, profoundly gratifying.
In celebrating this venerable custom, we discovered ourselves asking: what kind of Christmas card does an architect ship? What festive missives emerged from the minds of Charles and Ray Eames, Frank Lloyd Wright, or Ludwig Mies van der Rohe? We scoured archives, museums and foundations to seek out out.
The discoveries are a delight: historic playing cards which are intelligent, charming and eccentric – testaments to the creativity of the twentieth century’s biggest architectural minds. Learn on for a have a look at festive designs from the Eameses, Wright et al, the place vacation cheer meets design brilliance.
Charles and Ray Eames
(Picture credit score: © 2025 Eames Workplace, LLC. All rights reserved.)
(Picture credit score: © 2025 Eames Workplace, LLC. All rights reserved.)
(Picture credit score: © 2025 Eames Workplace, LLC. All rights reserved.)
These playing cards have been illustrated by Charles Eames between 1927 and 1931, earlier than he met his spouse and inventive associate, Ray. Over time, he created hand-drawn Christmas playing cards for household and pals, lots of them lithographs enhanced with hand colouring. Among the many assortment are a wreathed door drawn for Fred and Lucia Woermann, the mother and father of his first spouse, Catherine (prime); and a card depicting Charles, Catherine and their daughter Lucia standing on a cartoon-like map of St Louis, Missouri (backside).
(Picture credit score: © 2025 Eames Workplace, LLC. All rights reserved.)
(Picture credit score: © 2025 Eames Workplace, LLC. All rights reserved.)
These photographic Christmas playing cards have been created by Charles and Ray – posed and photographed by the couple within the Forties.
Frank Lloyd Wright
(Picture credit score: The Frank Lloyd Wright Basis Archives (The Museum of Fashionable Artwork | Avery Architectural & Nice Arts Library, Columbia College, New York))
(Picture credit score: The Frank Lloyd Wright Basis Archives (The Museum of Fashionable Artwork | Avery Architectural & Nice Arts Library, Columbia College, New York))
This 1907 Christmas card, created in Oak Park, Illinois, is rendered in ink and pencil on tracing paper. It options textual content drawn from a poem titled ‘The 4 Seasons in 4 Verses’ in E-book 4, Freedom, of Wright’s An Autobiography.
Ludwig Mies van der Rohe
(Picture credit score: Christmas card (recto). Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, designer. Carter H. Manny Jr. Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Artwork and Structure Archives, The Artwork Institute of Chicago. Digital File # 200303_190829-118)
(Picture credit score: Christmas card (verso). Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, designer. Carter H. Manny Jr. Papers, Ryerson and Burnham Artwork and Structure Archives, The Artwork Institute of Chicago. Digital File # 200303_190829-119)
A card that Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed and despatched to architect Carter Manny in 1968.
Alison Smithson
(Picture credit score: © Smithson Household Assortment)
(Picture credit score: © Smithson Household Assortment)
In December 2025, Roca Gallery in London launched an exhibition of Christmas playing cards by Alison Smithson, a British architect and key determine within the brutalist motion, who collaborated together with her husband Peter Smithson on tasks resembling Robin Hood Gardens and Hunstanton Secondary Fashionable College. Alison created playing cards yearly, a practice now continued by her daughter Soraya, who organised the exhibition.
Louis H Sullivan
(Picture credit score: Christmas card. Louis Sullivan, designer. Sullivaniana Assortment, Ryerson and Burnham Artwork and Structure Archives, The Artwork Institute of Chicago. Digital File # 193101_251210-001)
This card was designed and signed by Louis H Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright’s mentor and one in every of his key influences, in 1920. Sullivan is usually known as the ‘father of the skyscraper’, with key works together with the Wainwright Constructing in Missouri, the Warranty (Prudential) Constructing in New York, and Chicago’s Carson Pirie Scott Retailer.
Denys Lasdun
(Picture credit score: Lasdun Archive / RIBA Collections)
Denys Lasdun was one of many UK’s key authors of modernist and brutalist structure, identified for tasks such because the Nationwide Theatre and the Royal Faculty of Physicians in London. This 1950 card, titled ‘Egophile’, depicts Lasdun alongside fellow architects Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew and Lindsey Drake as classical columns.
(Picture credit score: Lasdun Archive / RIBA Collections)
(Picture credit score: Lasdun Archive / RIBA Collections)
This card was despatched to reasonably than obtained by Lasdun, and includes a drawing of the Royal Faculty of Physicians in Regent’s Park. Signed ‘from the medical orderlies’, it seems to have been despatched by the employees there.
Jane Drew and Max Fry
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
This card, designed in 1953, depicts Chandigarh, India, the place British modernist architect Jane Drew labored on city planning and housing tasks alongside Le Corbusier.
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
This card, from 1948, exhibits the house and workplace at 63 Gloucester Place, London, which Drew shared together with her husband and inventive associate, Max Fry, who continuously collaborated together with her on instructional, housing and institutional tasks.
Ernő Goldfinger
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
Ernő Goldfinger, the Hungarian-born British modernist architect identified for brutalist residential buildings in London resembling Trellick Tower and Balfron Tower, created this Christmas card in 1938 for himself and his spouse Ursula.
Chamberlin, Powell & Bon
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
The architect trio behind the Barbican Property created many Christmas playing cards over the course of twenty years. These playing cards, produced between 1960 and 1982, drew on their in depth travels to Italy, Spain, Egypt, India and the USA, reflecting the wide-ranging influences that knowledgeable their work, but sustaining a distinctly brutalist sensibility.
Stephen Rowland Pierce
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
Stephen Rowland Pierce was a British architect and town-planning marketing consultant, identified primarily for his work on Norwich Metropolis Corridor (1938), broadly considered one in every of Britain’s best interwar public buildings. This 1920 Christmas card, rendered in black and white, depicts a townhouse within the fashionable model of the interval.
Michael Ventris
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
Michael Ventris labored totally on postwar housing and college tasks, his modernist designs emphasising performance and readability. This 1946 Christmas card, despatched to his son Nikki, exhibits Father Christmas at an architectural drafting board with a sack filled with miniature homes by his facet.
Raymond McGrath
(Picture credit score: RIBA Collections)
Raymond McGrath was chief architect for the BBC within the Thirties, designing studios and broadcasting services with a useful, modernist aesthetic. His 1930 black-and-white card depicts a fantastical underground home known as The Burrow.
TOPICS
Supply: Wallpaper
