We received our first high-end designer holiday card this past Christmas. 

     Opening a gold-lined envelope, I pulled a card of lovely white card stock out to read three words  printed in a mixture of black, chartreuse, lavender, red, olive green,  lipstick pink, yellow, and metallic gold block letters:  Hope Peace Cookies.  Inside it said:  all good things for the holidays.  The message was neat enough, but for all the obvious tenets of quality, the rather rudimentary card design did not appeal to me.  Something compelled me to, uncharacteristically, turn the card over.  In small black letters on the back I found:  kate spade PAPER.

     The couple who sent us this card has never needed to pretend financial status, or advertise the weighty financial status they have.  They are also two of the kindest and most unpretentious people I know and both share an eye for classic design, so I bet they chose this card because they liked it, not because it said kate spade PAPER on the back. 

      But this card niggled at my thoughts until I stopped to figure out why – it was a commercial encroachment into what I consider artist territory, a hit too close to home.  In nonfiction book publishing, with every passing year, the quality of the person’s work seems to be less and less important, while the quantity of times the person’s name and face has appeared in any and all media becomes more and more important. 

      I love greeting cards, my favorite affordable art.  I’m not inferring that kate spade isn’t an artist or doesn’t have highly-talented artists in her employ.  And I’m not inferring her card isn’t “art” because it didn’t appeal to me.   What I am is hoping that this card doesn’t indicate another arena where the gifts of currently lesser known or unknown artists are to be tumbled under and drowned beneath the wake of tried-and-true commercial celebrity.  

       When that happens, everybody loses, kate spade included.