Designing Sincerely, Valentines

We are the co-directors of curatorial arts organisation, Panel. Panel is based in Glasgow, however we work across Scotland, in both urban and rural areas, to create projects, exhibitions and events that are uniquely connected to their site and to local histories, archives and collections. We commission and collaborate with artists, designers, makers, writers, musicians, filmmakers and many others, to commission and produce new work, that examines the dynamic ways in which under-represented or alternative perspectives and ideas can be foregrounded through design, craft and making.

With graphic designer Maeve Redmond, we were invited by V&A Dundee to co-curate an exhibition that would respond to the business archive of one of Dundee’s most successful commercial photographers, James Valentine & Sons. Held at University of St Andrews, the James Valentine Collection comprises approximately 180,000 items, including photographs, postcards albums and negatives spanning the period 1824 ­– 1994. Our curatorial approach set out to frame this unique archive in terms of design and making, identifying themes through community engagement, and through the commissioning of new creative work that would make a connection to material in the archive.

During our first visit to view the collection at St Andrews University, we were immediately drawn to an old sales catalogue, distributed by Valentines during the 1900s. This beautifully designed publication simply provides a list of all the places documented by Valentines throughout the United Kingdom up until the 1890s. It was incredible to see the breadth and commercial nature of Valentines’ output in postcards, already in excess of 30,000 ‘views’ as well as the vast number of photographers the company employed at this time. For us as it highlighted, in one object, the importance of Valentines to the development of the holiday postcard ­– the quintessential souvenir.

The archive holds such a vast collection of items, ranging from photographic negatives to original prints, to albums– as well as thousands of postcards. It was really interesting to discover that images with the same view were often used over a number of years for reproduction in souvenir booklets, series, and postcards. Also visible in the collection was the work of artists who were employed to modify Valentines’ stock of photographic images, adding details such as clouds and people, and changing compositions through photomontage and hand-painting processes.

As the exhibition is set within the upper foyer space of the museum, we were interested in thinking about scale and how the exhibition would be viewed from a distance. Central to the exhibition is a new commission by Maeve Redmond who has created a series of oversized postcards in response to the Valentines archive print collection, and a film by artist Rob Kennedy focusing on the stories and experiences of those who worked for Valentines. Organised around four key themes: ‘Local Views’, ‘Celebrations in Print’, ‘The Biography of a Postcard’ and ‘Working at Valentines’, the exhibition structure, conceived by Rob Kennedy as a key creative component of the exhibition, also functions to house the display of original artwork, alongside selected objects from the James Valentine Photographic Collection. Presented together, they create an immersive viewing experience, a landscape of multi-views in the open space of the Michelin Design Gallery.

Valentines was a company best known for popularising the holiday postcard during the first half of the twentieth century, however they were also widely known as one of the world’s leading greetings cards manufacturers, with factory, office and warehouse premises located across Dundee. From the start we set out to subjectively mine and reveal the James Valentine Photographic collection through an engaging, collections-based exhibition. Our initial research concentrated on the Valentines postcard collection, looking at the postcard souvenir as a vehicle for exploring ideas around work and leisure, print technology and the image, material culture and communication. This soon expanded to include the greetings card as a key output of the Valentines factory, uncovering a new perspective on the story of commercial design as part of Dundee’s rich print heritage.

During our research into the archive, we found only a few records relating to the business and operations of the firm, with limited information about Valentines’ employees, including the many commercial artists they employed to produce their designs. We were interested to find out more about the people behind the scenes, their experience and skills as well as the impact Valentines had on their lives more widely. So, we decided to extend our research beyond the archive and to foreground, alongside objects from the collection, stories from former employees of the company, who worked in varying roles from administrator to artist, printer to finisher and sales to distribution.

Maeve’s new work responds to particular items in the archive, exploring print process, multiples and mass production, and more broadly the culture of twentieth-century mass production. She has worked directly with archival material to develop a series of image-based collaged works that reference the topographical landscape postcards for which Valentines were best known, utilising the window motif and other design elements.

Rob’s film documents the stories and experiences of 10 former Valentines employees who worked at the factory between 1950 and 1994. Through a series of interviews, layered with archive and amateur film footage of the factory and its environs, the film highlights the important contribution Valentines plays in Dundee’s social history.

We spoke to over 40 individuals who previously worked for Valentines as part of our curatorial research, and sadly we were not able to include all their voices within the scope of the exhibition. Many of the former Valentines’ staff had kept their own personal archives, which they very generously shared with us as part of our curatorial research process. Ephemera found within their collections ranged from original illustrations and in-house publications to photos of staff nights out and even a set of Valentines 150-year branded anniversary playing cards!

We were fortunate to be able to show a small selection of material from private lenders alongside archival material from the University of St Andrews. Two items really stand out for us: an original watercolour painting signed by Valentines artist, ‘Herb’, depicting a cute dog drinking a glass of champagne, and a panoramic postcard of Portobello Bathing Pool in the 1930s.

The painting, on loan from a private collection, was one of a series of special occasion greetings card designs created in Valentines’ in-house art department during the 1970s and exemplifies the commercial style of the company during that period. The postcard, from the Valentines archive, is a beautiful example of the hand-tinting process that was employed to add colour to black and white postcard images. The soft hues of blue, yellow, orange, pink and green in this image are also echoed across the exhibition graphic design scheme by Maeve Redmond. Both objects tell a distinct story about making, and the skill of the artist’s hand involved in the design process at Valentines, as well as telling us much about taste and the social and cultural values of their time.

Dundee is already well known for its ‘Jute, Jam and Journalism’ industries. We hope that this exhibition reveals another side to Dundee’s industrial and commercial design history and that it inspires further engagement with the archive held at St Andrews.

Due to popular demand Sincerely, Valentines has been extended and is on now in our Michelin Design Galleries until 14 May 2023.