Products in the “Greetings Cards” Category

Although considered by some to be an effete and degenerate practice, "an hote bath of swete watre" presented medieval bathers with the opportunity to clean and preen themselves, while medicinal baths were also prescribed to treat the symptoms and ease the pains of the sick. Manuscripts list when and with whom baths might be taken, and give details of the most effective herbs and potions to be added to the water. The rich might bathe in marble or stone baths. More commonly, portable wooden tubs were used.

Based on illustrations in a mid-fourteenth century English psalter, the girls play tabor, cymbals, recorder, symphony (hurdy gurdy), fiddle and organ.

The popular game given an eleventh century twist.

The Green Man sleeps.

Stylised Green Man heads, disgorging leaves from their heads and faces, were commonly found during the Middle Ages in Christian contexts carved into stone and wood.  They probably symbolised creation and resurrection. However, the tradition of The Green man undoubtedly dates back even further to more ancient pagan folk lore and customs associated with the veneration of trees and the changing seasons of the year.

An illustration from the classic story by The Brothers Grimm.

St Frideswide and her companions escape down the Thames from Oxford to their hiding place in Bampton Woods.

Oxford St Frideswide

Patron Saint of the city and university of Oxford, Frideswide was the first Abbess of a double monastery in Oxford in the late seventh century. As a young woman she had escaped the unwelcome attentions of a royal suitor by escaping by boat up the River Thames to Bampton where she hid in the woods for three years. She is seen here peeping through the leaves of her arboreal hiding place. She is similarly represented on what is believed to be her thirteenth century shrine the fragments of which were discovered in 1875 and placed nearby in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.

A boar stands between two mythical beasts popular in medieval art and commonly represented in the bestiaries. Above piggy is the Yale, described as being the size of a horse with an elephant's tail and the jaws of a boar. The Yale has two very long horns capable of moving independently one of the other. Below piggy is the Amphisbaena, a venemous reptile with two heads, one in the right place and the other at the end of its tail. It could tolerate cold climates, unlike other serpents, and was able to scuttle backwards and forwards with equal speed.

An illustration from the classic story by Hans Christian Anderson.

The Boat Race a la Bayeux.

2004 marked the 175th anniversary of the Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race which was first rowed on June 10th 1829. This card was designed to commemorate that anniversary.

The 1829 race was held at Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire when a crowd of 20,000 was reported to have attended. Oxford were clear winners. The turnout gave the people of Henley the idea of organising a rowing regatta, and ten years later Henley regatta was born.

After 1829 the Boat Race was raced intermittently on the Thames at Westminster until the race moved six miles up-stream in 1845 to the village of Putney to avoid river congestion. The Boat Race became an annual event after 1856, and apart from interruptions during the two World Wars, has continued into the 21st century.