Nancy Chayne’s first holiday card, created as she turned 13, features her new home at 3302 Westwood Parkway in Flint, Michigan. The family had just moved there amid the 1937 GM Sit-Down Strikes, shaping Nancy’s lifelong sense of caution. This house, with its custom design, sparked her enduring love for architecture, furnishings, and House Beautiful magazine.
This was the first holiday card Nancy signed and dated in her distinctive reverse-sloped cursive, treating it like a true work of art. That year, she attended the 1939 New York World’s Fair, where GM’s Futurama exhibit left a lasting impression—so much so that decades later, she remarked how modern highways felt like living inside that futuristic vision.
This strikingly modern design—almost 2025 in feel—shows Nancy’s refined sense of proportion already in place at age 15. That fall, she left Flint for a private day school near Boston, her first time living independently. Seen as “from the wilderness,” the experience deepened her pride in her Great Lakes roots—an outlook passed down through generations.
Reissued by JCMjr for the 2025/2026 Holiday Season
Nancy often revisited this favored theme—nature prominent in the foreground with tiny human touches in the distance, and the still winter air sending smoke straight up. Though likely designed before Pearl Harbor, the image carries a subtle sense of looming uncertainty. She appears to have paused card-making for the next three war years, as she navigated high school, graduation, and early adult life in Boston.
Nancy’s first card after high school reflects her early art training at Boston’s School of Practical Art, where first-year students studied form and shading without color. Her father, a practical engineer, encouraged serious vocational training over a typical college path. This striking, colorless design features an arched bridge—echoing the Asiatic influences she admired, nurtured by Boston’s rich East Asian art collections.
Another example of Nancy’s Boston art school training, this monochrome piece was created during a busy period juggling work and studies. It’s the first to feature her signature speckled background—evoking a blizzard or adding texture—made by flicking paint from a toothbrush. Throughout her career, Nancy balanced fine detail with minimalist brushwork that conveyed much with just a few strokes.
This card marks the start of Nancy’s lifelong love for gnarly trees and droopy evergreens, featuring the popular reverse-highlight motif of the late ’40s and ’50s. The cozy cabin in the background adds to the warmth. Notably, this is the year she married John Cephas Martin, signing as NCM—reflecting the era’s custom of adopting her husband’s surname while keeping her maiden name as a middle name.
No card appeared in 1948 as life’s demands took priority during her final year at MIT and job hunting.
This is the most unusual of her cards, and she always felt a little awkward about it. It reflected the bare-bones beginning of a marriage—cramped apartments with “month left over at the end of the money.”
Only a small number of these were ever made. Each one featured actual plaid ribbons, cut and pasted onto the cards one-by-one, with the faces, hands, and other details individually painted by Nancy herself.
It’s a great testament to the often-cited idea that constraints and limitations can fuel creativity.
The design is a nod to John’s Scottish heritage—something he wasn’t intense about, but took quiet pride in. By this time, both his and her Boston chapters were behind them. The newlywed couple had packed all their belongings into a single coupe and moved—yes, in January—to St. Paul, Minnesota, for John to begin work at 3M Company.
It also marked the start of a new pattern: they became the first occupants of a brand-new apartment on the suburban edge of St. Paul. From then on, they almost never lived in a central city again, and rarely in a previously occupied residence.
John and Nancy had been living in Minnesota, and the Chaynes were still in Flint, but in 1950–51 both families relocated to the northern suburbs of Detroit—just a few miles apart. Both were on-trend as first occupants of newly built homes: the Chaynes in a generously sized ranch house in Bloomfield Township, and the Martins in a modest one-bedroom apartment in Birmingham.
Many later assumed this was when John joined GM, but in fact, he was still with 3M during his Detroit years, working in their office that supported the auto industry as a Tier-1 supplier of adhesives and coatings.
With his promotion came the means to splurge on a fully printed card of one of Nancy’s paintings.
This piece is another variation on drooping trees, with still air and vertical smoke rising from a tucked-away, receding cabin—quiet and deeply comforting.
This begins a period of a dozen years when Nancy would each year do 2 separate designs or 2 versions of a design, one for her parents – Charles and Esther Chayne – to use
for their outreach, and one for Nancy and John to use as an independent couple.
Here another vertical smoke and droopy tree in monochrome with a more subtle block NCM signature.
Likely not a holiday card, this rare sepia-toned piece showcases Nancy’s skill in pencil work and composition, with a rich study of deciduous trees in full leaf. Influenced by her love of Japanese silk prints, it reflects her deeply Asiatic aesthetic. This is also the first piece signed in her distinctive reverse-sloped cursive with her full name. Created before she had traveled west or abroad, it captures the quiet beauty of Midwestern and New England landscapes.
Reissued by JCMjr for the 2024/2025 Holiday Season
This monochrome design is more elaborate, featuring Nancy’s full three-name signature and, for the first time, a formal “Mr. and Mrs.” footer using John’s full name—middle names being a family hallmark. That year, they purchased land in Franklin, MI to build their first home. John was briefly re-drafted during the Korean War, while Nancy’s father entered his peak at GM, leading innovations like the XP-300 concept car—which even toured the distant Puget Sound, a fitting bit of narrative foreshadowing.
Very similar but unique compositions for the Chaynes and Martins.
Very similar but unique compositions for the Chaynes and Martins.
Again, very similar designs, but each unique, and also printed on different colored paper to add to the individual look..
This piece showcases a unique script style Nancy developed at the Practical Art School in Boston—its name and technique now lost to time. The design follows Nancy and John’s first European trip in 1952, a passport milestone that took them through Germany, Switzerland, and Austria. After seeing the dramatic Alps, Nancy found the Midwest oppressively flat—her love for “wrinkly land” begins to show in this composition.
One of two designs from this year—exact family attribution unknown—this card features Nancy’s playful starburst over the “i” in “Martin.” 1957 marked a major life shift: the Martins moved into a brand-new home in Kettering, Ohio, where they would stay for 15 years. John left 3M to join GM’s Frigidaire division, entering the most rewarding phase of his career during the postwar suburban boom. These were golden years for both John and Nancy.
One of two designs from this year—though it’s unclear which was for which branch of the family—this card features Nancy’s charming “i”-dot starburst. In 1957, the Martins moved into a brand-new home in Kettering, Ohio, where they’d remain for 15 years. It was also the year John joined GM’s Frigidaire division, launching the most fulfilling chapter of his career during a golden age of suburban growth and innovation.
With two designs from this year and no clear attribution, both reflect Nancy’s growing fascination with Alpine and Western landscapes. Her first trips to the West Coast with GM’s “Motoramas” sparked a lifelong bond with the Rockies and Sierras—deepened by family stories from her mother, Esther, who spent early 1900s summers in untamed Montana. Though she’d seen Europe first, Nancy found her true connection in the American West, a place that echoed both her heritage and imagination.
Two designs survive from this year, though it’s unclear which belonged to the Chaynes or Martins. Alpine imagery reflects Nancy’s growing connection to the American West—sparked by her travels with GM’s “Motoramas” and deepened by family stories of Montana wilderness from her mother, Esther. Though she’d seen Europe first, Nancy found lasting inspiration in the Rockies, Sierras, and Cascades—regions tied to both heritage and destiny.
This richly detailed design marked Nancy’s first deep dive into her love of small, colorful birds—a recurring theme in later works. Unlike the crow-dominated skies of Seattle, she cherished the vibrant birdlife along the Great Lakes flyways of her youth. Created during her most artistically fertile years, this piece reflects both technical mastery and a joyful chapter in her life.
A striking contrast to Nancy’s other 1947 design, this piece showcases two signature techniques. The black tree uses her distinctive “streak” style—later seen in her 1953 lettering—while the background introduces her spritz cameo effect. She hand-cut a tree-shaped mask from parchment, applied it with rubber cement, then spritzed ink over it, peeling the mask away to reveal the negative space. Though not yet a mother, her son recalls watching her perform this technique in later years with great precision and artistry. Likely created using two or three separate plates, this level of layering became too costly for small print runs after the 1960s, making this card an early example of art thriving under technical constraint.
Again, very different designs this year.
Another study of speciality birds for the Chaynes.
For the Martins, a long letter-envelope sized card combining her signature droopy trees with the brilliant spot-o-color provided by the cardinal.
Personal footnote, by this Christmas season, I was already “in the oven” gestating !
This year, a much simpler design, but also showing the use of 2 print plates or silk-screens for two different ink runs, with the dark green ink coordinated with the green paper.
Using the same design as the year before, this edition features blue ink on blue paper—simpler, as it was created between diaper changes and feedings. It also marked the debut of “Jacey Martin” on the footer, a phonetic blend of initials “J” and “C.” Nancy, ever ahead of her time, planned for “Jacey” to grow into “Jace.” Born amid jet age optimism, this card welcomed a new era—for both the family and the country.
Just one card this year, and not one of Nancy’s favorite designs. Baby was still a burden and there was much to be done, but Nancy always felt obligated to do some design each year, as a kind of life discipline or regimen on many levels.
One of my favorites, fundamentally because I like to say of the Martins and Chaynes “we are a Northern people”. Forests and snows are welcoming – – as long as you have a solid dry cabin, with a warm fire and cocoa, in which to be sequestered and cozy. Another use of the toothbrush spritz technique.
Separate Chayne and Martin designs returned for 1961. Also this is the first time we see Nancy render a curvilinear signature line, which she would predominantly maintain for the rest of her works.
The rounded-corner cross with dots at the tips to make it more like a “star” was a popular motif in the early 1960s. Here they are placed to appear as if ornaments hanging from the tree branches.
Different trees, same ‘stars’ but more floating here. Also mixing it up with use of a mottled paper stock.
Perhaps Nancy’s most intricate and artistic card, this piece showcases her love of songbirds and natural asymmetry, brought to life through vivid full color—something rising print costs later made rare. Her eye for shading and proportion, honed through Boston art training, is on full display. Created during a time of personal and national optimism, this card reflects the height of both her artistry and the American Dream.
Reissued by JCMjr for its 80th Anniversary, 2022/2023
This was the design—Nancy’s personal emblem, later used on her letterhead and social cards. Created for the Chayne family’s holiday card the year Charles retired from GM, it marked their move to Pebble Beach—a place our family would come to see as paradise. The elegant, long-winged birds signaled a shift in Nancy’s artistic focus and became a lasting motif.
Reissued by JCMjr for its 80th Anniversary, 2023/2024
THIS is the card we got that year, a more Midwestern themed card for a family still in Dayton, Ohio. However, the faun was likely inspired by the mule deer that populated the Monterey Peninsula where the Chaynes retired, and also subliminally, Disney’s movie “Bambi” had been re-issued for theatrical release just a few years prior, so was re-freshed in cultural awareness.
Reprising the Bambi theme with much simpler line drawing, but still getting color through multiple plate/screen runs, one for each color.
For this, she would draw the whole design on paper and then overlay thin drafting paper actually called “flimsy paper”, one for each color run, and then just paint the one color on each layer, then giving all 4 layers here to the printer to screen.
1965
This simple seagull design reflects a somber year—Nancy’s mother passed away shortly after settling into her dream home in Pebble Beach. Nancy spent months in California, while I finished first grade in Carmel. The card’s sparse composition, possibly hinting at absence or departure, mirrors both personal grief and the broader national turmoil of 1965.
Another beautiful spritz cameo, and since the cardinal red is the cardstock, I think this is the overall darkest red card of the collection. Also note the change in signature, shortened to just Nan Martin.
One more dual design, this one for her Father, who had remarried to his longtime executive assistant Eleanor Maske. Evoking the salt spray mists and seagulls along the Northern California coast, with the trees more Redwoods further north than the Cypress of Monterey. This is probably her second-most iconic design and among her own favorites.
This is the Martin card for that year. She often liked the motif of one single tree ornament, Again the vivid cardinal The casual Nan Martin signature. I never discussed the influence, but I note historically that “A Charlie Brown Christmas” had premiered just two seasons prior and was still a fresh new narrative in the culture, and I suspect there was, if only subliminal, some influence of the notion of honoring and adorning the humble.
After moving to a custom-built home in suburban Kettering, the family took their only month-long vacation—a Western road trip. That year, Nancy reused a prior design but introduced a lasting message: “May the True Spirit of Christmastime Fill Your New Year.” The phrase reflected her shift away from organized religion and her desire to focus on peace, goodwill, and the deeper meaning of the season.
Refreshed in the our new house, she wanted to try a more ambitious card for 1969. So this uses 3 color masks including 3 passes of spritz – in each color. This is combined with her beloved seagulls and using the rounded-cross “star” ornament, as if the birds were delivering ornaments – also the bell – to adorn some flora somewhere.
This card marks another move—this time to the only previously lived-in home of John and Nancy’s marriage. Cleveland felt distinctly East Coast, with its “Western Reserve” roots and preference for New York over Midwest news. Their new home in Chagrin Falls, once a mill town, had become a chic Cleveland suburb—despite confusion over its name.
A different look than most of her arbors, more puffy and rounded forms. More spritz cameo and more increasingly impressionistic seagulls.
Again, changing things up. A more ornate font than usual and her signature in block print on the lower tree limb as if carved .
The droopy trees were getting narrower and taller.
More seagulls in spritz cameo.
And now the BIG MOVE. Having ached to move (emigrate) to the Pacific Coast for decades, it finally happened in 1974, unexpectedly ending up 700 miles north of Monterey and Carmel in the Seattle area (Mercer Island).
We were all excited and to reflect our emigrated status, she used the spritz cameo to suggest Mt. Rainier and the side mountain Little Tahoma to the right.
Again a bird bringing an ornament to an outdoor tree.
It should be noted that by this time and going forward,
Nancy’s designs were getting much more simple with
solids and line drawings. This was largely due to cost.
Silk screening with professional printers was becoming too expensive for several hundred cards, so we started moving to offset or thermographic printing through stationery retailers.
Growing even more economical, this was a single color imprint.
Of personal note, this was the year I graduated from high school and started a college session at the University of Washington, living more independently by car, while still sleeping and studying at home all 4 years.
Here she splurged a bit on a two-color print, but using a tall, narrow card that would fit into a standard business letter envelope, to save on special envelopes.
Even simpler layout, using a flat 5×7 cardstock that would fit into standard envelopes.
The simplicity was also a consequence of another hard year for Nancy when her father died in California 13 years after her mother did. There was also, as so often, some friction with his second wife/widow, so the creative spark was weak and the desire for peace was strong.
1979
1979
Slight variation on the prior years work
Returning to the theme of Mt. Rainier and our growing self-identity as Seattleites and Washingtonians.
This is the year I graduated from the University of Washington with a throwback “Liberal Arts Bachelor” similar to the degree my father got from Wittenberg University in Springfield, OH.
My father had encouraged me that this might be the only time I could “have fun with my mind” so he encouraged me to go for it, having felt his Liberal Arts studies had been a good foundation for his subsequent Engineering and Business work.
In the late 1970s, my parents became very close friends with the Rondel family, Ron and Elaine. Elaine was a very DIY housewife and did a great deal of home canning.
Nancy designed this small Pres-a-ply label for her many Mason Jars and gave it to Elaine for Easter.
Water rarely appeared in Nancy’s work, making this piece a unique gem. That year marked major transitions: John and Nancy visited a still-closed China, I left home for MIT, and our family dog passed—ushering in a new chapter. With the nest empty and John newly settled at Boeing, they resumed life as a globe-trotting duo, together once more.
Another variation on forests, Cascades and birds
An interesting study of using double lines to create a richer outline effect.
Personal note – this year I graduated from MIT and struck out with my first real salaried career job. Future seemed to require sunglasses.
Another study in using double lines.
This is interesting; a classic droopy trees and birds motif using what might appear like one of her classic spritz cameos, but it’s not. Here she works to achieve that effect by instead inking every dot individually, a 19th century technique called pointillism to which she returned more frequently in the 2000s
This is interesting; a classic droopy trees and birds motif using what might appear like one of her classic spritz cameos, but it’s not. Here she works to achieve that effect by instead inking every dot individually, a 19th century technique called pointillism to which she returned more frequently in the 2000s
A great reprise of the horizontal-streak-y motif and lettering style she first developed at the School of Practical Art in Boston, 40 years prior.
Simple card stock this year. For a framing device she used the style of the Chinese cloud frame, which she liked so much, she had it carved into a new front door for our house, which was largely rebuilt between 1988 and 1990.
My father had enjoyed the one and only “liquidity event” of his career, from serving on the Board of a company that pioneered bar-code scanners – not quite Microsoft but close.
That allowed us to convert a very shoddily constructed bottom-of-the-70s-market house into something, well, quite substantial. I remain the beneficiary of that well-engineered remodel to this day. Thank you, parents.
This is also, by my rough count, the 60th card design of Nancy’s career. And we’re not even in the 21st Century yet.
Very simple and economical design prepared by a stationery company.
Again, resourceful in the face of tragedy, my father suffered a major heart attack, with bypass surgery that accidentally led to an 8-day coma.
This really took it out of her, so she just recycled her, by now, trademark Monterey Cypress with a standard stationers offering.
By unfortunately coincidence, my father had a relapse in December and we had Christmas dinner by take-out in his hospital room.
He kinda recovered, but was definitely starting his descent towards landing at his final destination
Simple thermography on stationery stock, adding a small Coast Salish motif. Nancy had always highly revered American’s indigenous tribes and had a number of indigenous artworks throughout her life.
Also, there had not been alot of validation of indigenous motifs in the Midwest of her youth, nor in the Northwest previously, but in the 1990’s Northwest there was a real surge in advocacy, support and promotion of native arts, alot in Washington State but most especially in British Columbia where, after years of attempted extinction, they completely flipped and embraced it as almost the Official Provincial Culture.
An attempt to get a little more content, with 3 colors and the recurring motif of sparse tree ornaments.
A return of the spritz cameo which she had not used in many years.
This was the year my father died and by extension I ended my 13 years in Boston and returned to Seattle for good.
Nancy was, naturally, completely devastated, but also felt that she could not send nothing at year-end, so for the holiday season she used some of the notecard stationery she had already in stock.
A very modest design as she was still in recovery.
Background note. Modern wives are often very self-possessed, but the traditional housewife often launched roughly into widow-hood when their main pillar and mission was gone.
In 1995, I took Nancy on a 2-week driving tour of New England at the peak of autumn colors, not only to re-acquaint her with where she grew up and also some new territory such as Montréal, but also to re-acquaint her with close friends that she and John had made during his latter career at Boeing, to show her that she was also loved and valued on her own terms, and not merely as Mrs. John.
Some exuberance returning with another spritz cameo.
This was the year I launched into my career working for the Japanese, which is a weblog unto itself. It delighted Nancy to no end !
Another double line study with sparse ornamentation.
Here is a return to the pointillism technique she first used back in 1986. Also if you hark back to some of her work in the 1940s, this reflects her love of minimalism, impressionism and her training at the Boston Art School, how to convey the feeling of alot – trunked tree with many branches – while actually showing very little.
Decidious trees had figured little in designs for decades, but here she brings them back, rendered as some sort of blossom or berry tree. Again that’s using pointillism. Also notice the one, very mid-century, starburst to the left of the evergreen.
Very simple printing but trying to bring in a lot of motifs here. A slight horizontal striping on the sun, the double-”line” technique, intended to evoke festive ribbons. Always one bell or other ornament. And, of course, a token seagull in the lower left. And she had not done gold on white before, so that felt festive for the season.
By the end of 2001, everyone had taken some impact from the events of September 11. Here the trees look droopy-er than previously and what could be Northwest raindrops could also be read as tears. But also a gold sun outline and traditional tree-top star as signs of hopefulness.
With 9/11 recovery still front of mind and war engaged in West Asia as a result, we wanted to suggest something akin to nature’s recovery after a disaster such as a forest fire or volcano. This was her design and she was too kind to insist on giving me credit for the idea. We were collaborators in most things.
After two down years, Nancy wanted to do something more festive. As well, the emergence of digital assisted printing was making color more affordable for the first time in decades, allowing her to explore the gorgeous textures of a northern autumn which she had not really been able to do before.
Double line motif with a multi-color spritz
Just changing things up again, she tried a light on dark background rendering, not done previously
A simple three color but with shadings of green on the central tree. Note the return of a starburst dotting of the “i’ in her signature.
An unusual more abstract design, but showing that even on her 81st Holiday card, she did not want to give up exploring new aspects of her artistic vision.
A colored pointillist motif that she would return to in her final card.
Always just a few or one ornament
An unusual dark background for this year
An interesting exercise, just the line drawing, no spritz, but making the lines not drawn but pointillist, including the bell.
Another variation. Using the spritz cameo idea, but instead of spritz, manually laid out snowflake designs. I recall that she looked up snowflake patterns online so she could capture their variety accurately.
Again, using that streaky motif from her early days.
Personal note – by this year, I had started my commuting career of work in Silicon Valley, as it turned out, the last salaryman job I would have.
N/A
I believe the background is combination of spritz and pointillist. Also she very much wanted the green tree to be not flat, but notice the shadings within the green coloration.
At this point, Nancy is 91 and infirmities of hand and legs are setting in. Years like this she was a little frustrated that she couldn’t produce much more than “the usual trees”.
But she would say throughout this period “well, I’ve got to produce a card or folks will think I’m dead”. So, she forged ahead.
Multi-color to fit in a regular business letter envelope
A good way to pass a few weeks. Each of those dots individually applied.
In her final years, Nancy embraced full-color digital printing to expand her creative reach. This piece captures the vivid contrast of evergreen forests and autumn foliage against mountain backdrops—a tribute to the Pacific Northwest. Though the colors may resemble wildfires today, they were meant to evoke falling leaves.
In 2020, Nancy chose to create her final holiday card on her own terms—returning to full color with new paints and a year-long design process. Even in hospice care, she insisted on finishing it herself, painting daily with assistance. She passed away while it was at the printer, her life’s journey bookended by this tradition she began at age 13.
