In Brief
- Mary Engelbreit has donated 120 original illustrations, along with books, consumer products and magazine mockups, to WashU Libraries.
- The collection highlights Engelbreit’s five-decade career and will be featured in an exhibition scheduled for July.
- Curators say the archive will serve as a valuable resource for students and researchers.
Beloved illustrator and pioneering entrepreneur Mary Engelbreit has donated a large collection of 120 original illustrations as well as books, consumer products and mockups of her magazine, Mary Engelbreit’s Home Companion, to the Dowd Illustration Research Archive at WashU Libraries. The gift is the first of five donations from Engelbreit and will be featured in a public exhibition scheduled for July 2027.
Best known for her whimsical illustrations of bespectacled girls, cherry-adorned greeting cards and holiday homewares, Engelbreit, a St. Louis native, has amassed an enormous following over her five-decade career. Andrea Degener, curator for the Dowd Illustration Research Archive, said WashU Libraries is excited to share her legacy with the public.
“People think of Mary Engelbreit as a celebrity who created this culture of cute. But she also is an incredibly talented artist,” Degener said. “There is this nostalgic, childlike quality to her work that draws people in. She’s created a huge body of work that the public will now have access to.”
Engelbreit started drawing as soon as she could hold a crayon and knew from a young age that she wanted to be an artist. She did not go to college, but found work as an illustrator at a small ad agency and later at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. In 1983, she and her husband, WashU graduate Phil Delano (AB ’67, MSW ’78), launched a greeting-card company. The business grew and soon the couple opened retail stores in malls across the nation. The economic collapse of 2008 forced her to shutter her stores and magazine, but she continued to create and sell new products. Engelbreit found a new audience after she published an illustration protesting the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014. Today, she sells “Punch a Nazi” pins and vote postcards.
“Her activism surprised a lot of people who know her as a woman who made sweet drawings, but she used her voice in a way that was authentic to her,” Degener said.
WashU Libraries staff is currently cataloging roughly 70 boxes of objects including illustrated calendars, children’s books and licensed merchandise.
Joy Novak, head of WashU Libraries Special Collections, said the collection will serve as an important resource to WashU faculty and students. Graduate students in the Sam Fox School’s illustration and visual culture program frequently use collection materials for research, she added.
“I think sometimes people think that if they donate materials that they will just sit in a vault and not be accessible. But we want our materials to be used and to be a source of inspiration for this next generation of illustrators,” Novak said. “In this case, it’s exciting to have this work because Mary Engelbeit is not just a talented illustrator, but a successful businessperson who created an empire.”
Engelbreit said she is honored that WashU will exhibit her work and share it with students.
“I’ve been to several exhibits at WashU Libraries, and I’m thrilled to think I’ll be an exhibit myself,” Engelbreit said. “I hope students will find something useful to study and will be able to see the joy I take in creating. I hope they’ll realize that the joy is the whole point.”
