Christmas Card, 1949: The King’s School, Peterborough

In 1949, when my dad was 15, he designed the card above which was selected by his school, The King’s School, Peterborough, for their Christmas card that year.

I remember seeing the card quite often over the years, as it lay amongst old letters and photos at my parents’ house. When Dad died in February and I began to write up his memoirs as a blog, Memoirs of John Michael Grinsell, I hunted it out again. It always fascinated me how intricate a design this was, presumably using scratch art technique to carve the picture into the card, picking up the white background underneath? [although from comments below it would seem it’s more likely a lino cut]

I could spend hours looking at the detail in the card: the curve of the chair, the architectural precision of the school building and the three little children playing in the snow. Hard to believe a young lad, the same age as Rory is now, laboriously etching out the scene.

Mum and I decided we would both like to use the card for our own Christmas card this year so she had them re-printed locally. I now have a large box of them to send out to friends.

I think writing my cards this year is going to be rather special.

Friday, 9 December: I think I have an answer as to how the card was created. My father’s sister, Betty, was speaking to my mum earlier and she remembers Dad working on the card at home: it was a linocut. She remembers him sitting working on the design for many hours to create the detail you see above.