Download Beautiful Free Vintage Easter Cards from the New York Public Library

‘Tis the sea­son when bun­nies tem­porar­i­ly upend cats as rulers of the Inter­net.

There are scores of vin­tage snap­shots in which inno­cent chil­dren are pas­sive­ly men­aced by hideous, full body bun­ny cos­tumes—hope­ful­ly an inac­cu­rate reflec­tion of the adults encased there­in…

“Medieval rab­bits that hate East­er and want to kill you”…

Some edi­ble DIY fails…

And mer­ci­ful­ly, a bit of sweet nos­tal­gia from the New York Pub­lic Library, who is mak­ing its robust col­lec­tion of East­er greet­ings avail­able for free down­load.

Each card comes with pub­li­ca­tion infor­ma­tion. Images of the flip sides reveal that the sender often con­sid­ered the pub­lish­ers’ preprint­ed sen­ti­ments cor­re­spon­dence enough. (It’s some­thing of a relief to real­ize that social media did not invent this kind of short­hand.)

Bun­nies are not the only fruit here… sea­son­al flo­ra and fau­na abound, in addi­tion to more explic­it­ly reli­gious iconog­ra­phy.

View the entire col­lec­tion here. Down­load as many as you’d like and do with them as you will.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Pub­lic Library Lets You Down­load 180,000 Images in High Res­o­lu­tion: His­toric Pho­tographs, Maps, Let­ters & More

New York Pub­lic Library Puts 20,000 Hi-Res Maps Online & Makes Them Free to Down­load and Use

Down­load 2,000 Mag­nif­i­cent Turn-of-the-Cen­tu­ry Art Posters, Cour­tesy of the New York Pub­lic Library

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday