Paris is being drawn now — the list sees every corner first, and picks the city that gets sealed next.

Stay in touch

A city writes to you in ink. You write back in color.

Why

Somewhere there is a city with your name on it.

One you have walked and think about at odd hours. Or one you have never been to and have been quietly promising yourself for years.

You probably cannot get back there this month. But an hour on a Sunday morning, with a cup of something and a handful of markers, gets closer than most things do.

The idea

What if the post brought you that city?

Not a photograph of the Eiffel Tower. The corner café with the green awning. The cane-back chair somebody left facing the street. The cup and the croissant at the table by the window.

Real corners, real cafés, real objects — drawn by hand in ink and then left alone. A city sends you the outline of itself and stops there. What it actually looked like is still an open question, and it is addressed to you.

How you answer

You color it back.

Your mood, your palette, your medium. Warm and gold because that is how you remember the light. Cool and grey because it rained the entire time you were there and you loved it anyway.

There is no correct version of a Posted Press page. Two people can color the same café and neither one is wrong — that is the whole point, and it is what makes this a correspondence rather than a coloring book. The line work is the letter. The color is the reply.

When you have answered one, show it: post yours with #ColorBack and tag @postedpress. Seeing the same corner answered ten different ways is the best part of the whole thing.

Where to find it

On paper, or printed at home.

  • In printHard copies through Amazon — a bound volume, single-sided, on paper chosen to take markers and a wash of watercolor.
  • DigitalDownloadable pages on Etsy, if you would rather print one at a time on paper you already like.
  • Each volumeFifty corners of one city, in no particular order.

Status — Posted From Paris, Vol. I is being drawn now, one corner at a time. Nothing is on sale yet. The list at the bottom of this page hears first.

Where this is going

A seal for every city, and a passport to stamp.

Every city gets one seal and one object it is known by. Paris is a cane-back bistro chair. Rome is a Vespa. Venice is the prow of a gondola.

The intention is that the seal ends up in your hands, not only mine. Finish a page and strike it with that city’s seal, the way a letter is cancelled the moment it is posted — your answer, marked as sent. Finish a whole city and stamp the passport.

The cities you have colored then sit together in one small book, in order, filling up the way a passport does. That is what the volumes are numbered for.

A brass wax seal stamp, a wooden rubber stamp and an oxblood wax seal pressed into a sheet of handmade paper.
The seal — yours to strike, not only mine
The Letterbook, a passport-sized oxblood clothbound book, open beside a page stamped with the Paris seal.
The passport — one page per city
Ten circular red cancellation seals: a Paris chair, Rome Vespa, Lisbon tram, Amsterdam bicycle, Venice gondola, Barcelona tile, Santorini church, Prague clock, Copenhagen sailboat and Edinburgh lantern.
Ten cities, ten seals — Paris first

Paris is being drawn now. The nine behind it are why the volumes are numbered.

Poste restante

Leave an address.

Nothing to buy, nothing to decide. What you get is a seat at the table while Paris is being drawn:

  • First lookEvery corner as it is finished, before it goes anywhere else.
  • A voteThe list picks which city gets sealed after Paris. Requests genuinely decide the order.
  • First copyTold before anyone else when Vol. I is ready, and how to get one.

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