guest blog by Grace Bonney 39

Mysterious Letters

image011
Mysterious Letters is one of the loveliest projects I have ever stumbled upon. In April 2009 Lenka Clayton & Michael Crowe sent a personal, handwritten letter to all 467 households in the small Irish village of Cushendall.

‘We hoped these unsolicited letters would prompt neighbourly discussion, spreading across the town, promoting community curiosity. The art work consists solely of the discussion between the recipients about what on Earth these letters are, who sent them and why, etc.’

image021
image031
I know it wasn’t their intention, but I would love to see the letters turned into a book! Lenka also made the super cute films love and age.

CLICK HERE for more images from the project after the jump!

image041
image051

Categories
guest blog
Related Posts
No related posts.

39 Comments

E.J.

People needing people, not gathering in a town hall and screaming at each other but being nice. What a novel idea. I love it, love it, love it. Thank you, Lenka and Michael.

phoenix

This *would* make a great book! It would read very much like Nick Bantock’s Griffin & Sabine…only real. :)

katie

positively charming. what the world needs now is letters, sweet letters.

Casey

Art can make a difference… or so I would hope. I would love to hear what the town’s reaction to the letters was.

Kat

this is so lovely! it’ll bring a smile to anyones face! owwww its sooo nice :)

the daily smudge

beautiful idea… what a treat it would be to find one of these in your mailbox. reminds me of Amelie (the movie) and all things good!

romy

that is really sweet indeed. makes me wonder why i don’t ever come up with any of these fun projects! hehe. wish i would receive one of those letters too…
:)

romy

I just watched the news video on their website…so funny. People were freaked out when they received them apparently, and some of them were even scared?! isn’t it funny how we immediately think it’s sweet and lovely and the people receiving them are creeped out? :p

Kim

wow!

very funny about people freaking out. it’s like when you go to NYC and are startled to find the friendliest people on earth.

Green key

I love the look of all these different letters. And handwriting them is certainly an art form that is on the wane. But I have to say that I find it a very subtle form of aggression to send them, without explanation, to people they don’t know. No matter how playful their intent, there is nothing particularly amusing about upsetting people.

kalli

ppl freaking out because some of the things said in the letters were creepy. like “this made me think of you…” wha?? why??

M

I almost screamed when I saw this – my boyfriend’s mother is from Cushendall and many of his relatives still live there. we found one written to his cousin – but have many more to read.

mribaro

Oh so cute and lovely! Emails can be more spontaneous and are faster, but I’ve been missing having pen pals and receiving real paper letters in my letterbox.

my material void

haha…I never thought it would freak people out – and neither did they probably, but to be fair, if it happened to me, I think I may be a tad freaked out!

It’s sad isn’t it that people doing something nice, to try and brighten up peoples days in todays society is looked upon with caution!

Eva

Who is ‘freaking out’ and why must it ‘sound creepy’? Can’t people think positive things anymore? I don’t think the intonation sounds creepy at all, just spontaneous and nice. it’s all in the head.

kurls

This is fantastic, thanks for this great post! I have been involved with letter writing, postcard sending and random mail exchange for years now and it has been so rewarding. If anyone is interested, a great and secure place to start is postcrossing.com. Reach out and help keep snail mail alive!

holly

I would be so thrilled to receive a kind note like this with such an artistic flair. I too loved the griffin and sabine books and feel like these would be so lovely to see- so curious if they rec’d any letters in return.

What a shame that handwritten letters are becoming an art form…..The world needs more love letters!

Lisa

great idea…I can see it shaking up people a little bit…my little town could use something like this. Maybe if the elementary school kids took this on as a project, said what they were doing in the local paper… I did mention small town didn’t I…it would be a great for the kids to teach the stuffy adults!

Melinda

I am inspired to write to my dear friends that I am lucky to have dotted around the globe… and send them silly paper things – I’ll do it.

kim

This is great! Maybe they should set up a club or something – enroll and leave your address and randomly send cute mail to the other members. I’d sign up.

Anna

I wish more people wrote letters. Maybe I should start…. now all I need is some colorful stationery :)

Monica

Charming? Yes. But, I can totally see how a random letter from a stranger that mentions “a thousand thieves breaking in with sticks” might freak someone out.

Leave a Comment

Design*Sponge reserves the right to restrict comments that do not contribute constructively to the conversation at hand, contain profanity, personal attacks or seek to promote a personal or unrelated business.