I suppose this in itself is a "vintage" post, since it was almost 4 months ago that we visited the Hallmark Visitors' Center at Crown Center in Kansas City during our spring break. The place isn't large, but it is charmingly packed with a history of the greeting card company, and since I love finding and reading vintage postcards at flea markets, I was taken in by the variety of antique and vintage cards, toys and mementos displayed chronologically beginning with the formation of the company in the early 1900s...
...and continuing to present day, featuring characters like Santa, Minnie Mouse (Disney and Hallmark have had a long-standing relationship), one of my all-time favorites--the adorable Miss Piggy, and the company's iconic, crabby Maxine. Another case featured postcards sent while traveling, by land and sea.
One hallway featured a series of Christmas trees decorated to honor company founder Joyce C. Hall, a tradition started in 1966. The 1972 tree reminded me of all the sparkly art I see in flea markets made from old costume jewelry and the framed tree made from jewels that belonged to Ryan's glamorous grandmother Jinx that hangs in Pop's living room, having never been taken down since she passed away just before Christmas in 1993. Another tree celebrated the year I was born, the Bicentennial, Nineteen and Seventy Six. The basket tree from the 80s brought to mind the aesthetic of all the Country Living magazines my mom collected during that decade. I asked her then, as a little girl, if I had to decorate my house "country" like her when I grew up. She said no. Turns out the apple doesn't fall far from the tree however...
Another display traced the history of Hall's department store...
An interactive section showed how some of the company's cards and other products are made and featured a modern printing press machine and a bow machine. The kids could run through the place with a "passport" to be stamped at 6 stations around the museum.
In a small living area, flat screens played trailers for many of the Hallmark Hall of Fame movies we've all seen and looped many of the sentimental, lump-in-throat, tear-in-eye commercials from TV, many of them "vintage." Case in point: Ed's Required Reading. Bawl. Every. Time.
We really stumbled on the museum inadvertently and had made our way to Crown Center initially to visit the interactive children's art exhibit Kaliedoscope, where we had a lot of fun making our own crowns and cards, crafts and puzzles. Both were fun and both were free.
"I just don't like to sit around and wait for something to happen; it is more fun making it happen." ~J.C. Hall
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