Can you believe it? Mary Engelbreit has been drawing professionally, selling her images and her gift ware for 40 years. Mary is celebrating the entire year of 2017 and I feel really good about that. Let me tell you how I discovered Mary Engelbreit.
About 25 years ago I went to St. Louis for a reunion at Washington University, the university I attended and from which I graduated. A few of my close friends from college all showed up and we spent a few days together.
They took me to the renovated train station in St. Louis which had become a "shopping mall". Somewhere in the middle of that train station mall I saw a glass kiosk room...well, that's what I call it, and I went in to see what was going on there.
The kiosk room turned out to be a store full of Mary Engelbreit merchandise....at that time, mostly posters, totes and other paper goods. I was fascinated by her colorful, yet sometimes edgy drawings and I literally thought that Sweet Tooth, which we had recently purchased, absolutely had to have Mary's merchandise.
When I returned to Tulsa, I told my "partners" (my sister and brother-in-law and my husband) that we had to research what manufacturers were working with Mary Engelbreit.
One of her first contracts was with Sunrise Greeting Cards and that was the perfect place to start with Mary's images. It was up, up and away from that point on. After a few years, Mary's merchandise had a rather large space in Sweet Tooth. People used to refer to us as "The Mary Engelbreit Store". I don't think those folks knew our actual store name.
Mary's most popular colors were black, white and red. People loved her black and white checked borders and the truly happy and clever message of her images.
Today Mary is still sitting down to create new images and convey her thoughts through her art work.
I say, Happy, happy anniversary Mary!! We have loved you for 25 years and there was always a large place in our hearts and in Sweet Tooth for your work.
Saturday, March 4, 2017
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