Peter Martin Raven

In the early 1950s Peter Martin Raven met Nancy Helena Wilson at Long Beach State College, where each of them was majoring in art, and started courting. Peter joined the Navy as was sent to Japan for a year. While there, he wrote to Nancy using envelopes adorned with his artwork. Originally there were 300-some envelopes. Here are the survivors of the survivors.

The original order and date(s) have been lost, but Peter included numbers on the outsides of the envelopes, although the thinking behind his numbering system is now a mystery so we don’t know why he reused some numbers.

With little to go on but the numbers themselves, I have divided these envelopes into two categories: Those with mostly artwork and those with artistic numbers in various typefaces.

Jacob Blickensderfer

Fuelling/Fülling family coat of arms