The Envelope

We meet envelopes everyday when we open our box letter, and we even see envelope on our laptop screen when connecting to our on-line mailbox since nearly every email server uses this picture somewhere.

Envelopes are everyday-life objects surrounding us; we all have one or two envelopes on our desk or table waiting to be put in a more appropriate place or waiting to be opened.

As an envelope is a packaging hiding a secret content, we are always excited and worried about what is in it. Whose name is in the envelope the foreman of the jury for Oscars is opening? (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hTTwSQPmMo min 7 ou http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A87InzywZOY) What is in the envelope the postman just slipped under the door, will that be a new bill to pay or a love letter from a secret admirer?

We might also wonder what the future of paper mailing, and so of envelopes, might be whereas more and more people use e-mailing.

Medium

First of all, what is it basically and what is briefly the history of the envelope?

Most people know or at least think they know what an envelope is, however, it is crucial to describe a bit what it is.

It is used mostly for packaging letters, messages or small objects before sending them. It allows the item that is sent (1) to be protected from any damage and also (2) to be kept secret, or at least out of the direct sight of the person who delivers it.

Pre-made envelops that we use today developed during the 19^th century thanks to machines that produced them. Different forms were experimented and nowadays lots of different kinds of envelopes exist.

Second, what is an envelope made of?

The envelope is usually made of paper, whatever its color (usually white). However, cardboard is another very used material, but not as much as Kraft paper which is notably used to make big envelopes supposed to contain a lot of things, indeed, Kraft paper is very resistant. In this sense this is a very simple object as this is usually made of only one major raw material.

However, it is nowadays current that envelopes be improved with a stripe of glue which enables to close it.

There are some exceptional envelops that are made of recycled paper and some super-hero envelopes that are protected by an armor of bubblewrap or quilted.

Finally, how can we reproduce it using its raw materials?

Usually, industrial envelopes are cut and stuck so that they are given the shape and dimensions desired. Creating an envelope is also all about folding paper… There is a whole technical jargon used by industrials to designate the different parts of an envelope… But is it an art to create an envelope?

Value

In France, the price of an envelope is on average 15 cents…

[For the part that follows, I only found data about Europe and I will therefore concentrate more on this part of the World, however, the figures that follow can give an idea about the world production of envelopes.

Sources:

• Website of the European Envelope Manufacturers Association (FEPE) (http://www.fepe.org/)
• A Microsoft study about messaging published by Radicati, available online: http://www.axigen.com/articles/introduction-to-antispam-practices_19.html]

There are 34 envelope manufacturing groups around Europe that are members of the association. These members cover 95% of the European Market for envelopes, i.e. more than 90 billion envelopes per year.

About 70% of the total European production is sold in the UK, Germany and France and here we can see the importance of those countries for the market for envelopes. If this market is large in Europe, we can consider and will assume that it is large too for the whole world, because envelopes manufacturers are located everywhere throughout the world… A Wikipedia source says that around 450 billion envelopes are produced each year, but this source cannot be really relied on.

Envelopes are mostly machine-made and the machines are more and more performing but also very expensive. A modern machine can produce 1200 envelopes per minute…

However, an envelope is made of paper and even though this paper is often recycled, sending paper letters could be seen as an unsustainable way of communicating in the internet era. The paradox is that this fact has not affected a lot the global sales of envelopes, as the following graph goes...

We see that, in Europe at least, the production of envelopes has only decreased of 10 billion in 7 years, which is not very high when we look at the progress of emailing.

We can see that the number of “serious” e-mails has not increased a lot. The increase in the E-mail traffic is mostly due to spamming. One conclusion that can be drawn is that people remain relatively loyal to conventional paper mail, even though the number has dropped… That could explain the relative stability in the amount of envelopes produced.

Style

What does the envelope look like and how does it differ from objects of the same family?

It looks like paper. But it is much more than mere paper because it is folded in a very special way in order for it to hold all kinds of things. However, as paper it is very flat and we have the same impression of lightness. I

According to what they are made of, envelops do not have the same aspect: kraft paper seems less smooth .

Color: They are usually white or brown but there are envelopes of all colors, for example in the web sitehttp://www.worldofenvelopes.com you can have 35 colors.

Type:

They can even have a window.

Then, what is the size of an envelope? It also depends. According to the international standard, the smallest envelop is 114mm-wide and 162mm-long and the largest one 28 x 40 cm. This envelope (the catalogue one) is 22.9cm x 32.4 cm and this one is 11cm x 22.

When you want to send a letter, you can just look at the size of the envelop in front of you and see if it will hold what you want to put in it or you can do complicated computations depending on the size of the letter and how many times you want to fold it. Indeed there is very standardized system of envelops size. This particularity brings me to the quantitative aspect originality of the envelope.

I will answer to the questions: what makes this object unique and sets it apart from identical objects? Is this object inviolable, or what, if anything, makes it sacrosanct?

So I was talking about very precise sizes of envelop which depends on the size of the paper that you want to put in it. Indeed there are very strict system and classification of envelopes that give the envelope recognition. It is an object we care about. So there are all the different types of envelopes I talked about (catalogue, seam side…) so a precise classification. There is also one for the size. The international standard paper sizes ISO 216 categorizes papers: A4, A3 according to very precise criteria, the ratio between the width and the length must always equals the square root of two. For the envelope we use the C series. So the envelope is unique since it has its own classification.

Similarly, some envelopes are unique because if you don’t use the right envelope for this type of letter and weight, the Post won’t send your letter. So the dimensions, weight and measurements for postal requirements should be known beforehand. If sending an envelope of non-standard size, additional postage may be needed. It is better to know international size standards when mailing envelopes to other countries. Since some countries may not support all the sizes.

Another element that makes this object original is that we can’t use it alone. Indeed, you don’t buy an envelope or use an envelope for its own sake. It is necessarily used with a letter, a card, pictures or whatever you want.

And finally, if at the beginning, when you buy a pack of envelops, they are all the same, completely identical, once they are used, they become unique. Indeed, an address is written, there is a stamp, a postmark and what they hold is different.