The cover of this card is a tiny fresco (watercolor on plaster) framed with a double matt. The picture painted is three glyphs I made up to suggest a birthday cake, glyphs that do not exist on real Egyptian walls nor in Gardener's vast list of Egyptian signs. The back is also matt board so the card is quite rigid. The design of the card is a very simple stand-up "V" mechanism, six of them parallel in a chevron arrangement, which allows the tabs to be loaded with figures that all stand up simultaneously when the card is opened and lay flat nicely when the card is closed. |
| The
card does not have an envelope, rather it is wrapped like a mummy in
a preposterously long length of paper off a roll, with repeated
foldings and with protective amulets and hieroglyphs drawn on 100 LB
Bristol paper, front and back, and spread throughout between the folded
layers so that they drop out when the card is unwrapped, like
confetti except less aggravating. The paper amulets are standard
recognizable protective pictograms; Kheper scarab, Eye of Horus,
Serket, Djed, Was staff, Ankh, winged solar disc, Tyet knot, etc., all
the usual funerary iconography, along with regular common hieroglyphs,
food, clothing, games, all the stuff commonly associated with the death
cults and to a culture long passed, then -- BANG! -- a colorful lively
card depicting a super abundance bordering on the prodigal and of
a pure joy for life verging on the ridiculous. The paper bundle is wrapped further in an oversized bar cloth, an inexpensive thin towel nearly cheesecloth but denser, also folded multiple times with amulets between the layers. A side strip was ripped off to provide a belt that was secured with a square knot. |
