Small Home Gazette, Fall 2023
The Christmas Card Queen
Reprinted with permission of Mill City Times, a weekly newsletter covering the Central Riverfront neighborhoods of Minneapolis.
It happens every year. You flip through your address book to see who to send your yearly holiday cards to. It can be tiresome, yet rewarding, and it sure helps if you have a fancy card to show off. That is where Mary Moulton Cheney comes into play.
Born in 1871 in St. Anthony, a year before it was annexed by Minneapolis, Mary Moulton Cheney was an extraordinary artist and teacher. She studied at the University of Minnesota; the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Harvard University. In 1897, when she came back to Minneapolis after her studies, she organized and taught the first class on design for the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts, now known as the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD). She would later become the principal of the design department, the Dean of Women, and then the college’s president. After her tenure at MCAD, she taught at Vocational High School.
Back in 1897 when she returned to Minneapolis, she opened her own studio and printmaking shop called The Artcraft Shop: Sign of the Bay Tree. Working with her business partner Mary Marsh Smith, they made calendars, tags, personal bookplates, and a plethora of cards, from greeting cards to Christmas.
Pictured here are some of my personal favorite Christmas cards of hers.
Editor’s Note
Would you like to send Mary Moulton Cheney holiday cards? We do not know of any ready-made cards bearing her designs, but if you are moderately handy with a computer you can create your own.
First, browse through Cheney’s illustrations, which are available online (copyright-free) in the Hennepin County Library’s digital collections.
Download one or more images, then head to a design-your-own card website. One such site is offered by Avery, the maker of popular print-at-home labels and nametags. There, you will find greeting card templates to which you can upload your Cheney image and create custom text for your card’s interior. Choose the number of cards you would like, and they will be mailed to you. A batch of 25, for example, costs about $36 plus postage.
