As with every year, we at Rietumu Bank have created special 2021 holiday greeting cards and calendars for our clients.
At this festive time, when we all lack positive news and pleasant emotions, we will tell you about the history of their creation.
The new postcard continues our theme of historical greeting postcards. Its design uses the original postcard that was sent from Riga back in 1913. In our modern “remake”, the postcard is made using gold embossing and a golden bull appears on it, being located right in the centre of the Town Hall Square – opposite the House of the Blackheads.
For the coming year, the bull has a double symbolic meaning. First, according to the Eastern calendar, 2021 will be the year of the bull. Secondly, the bull is a well-known symbol of financial markets – “bulls” are traders who speculate regarding a rise. The most famous implementation of this image took place in New York on the night before Christmas 1989. Right in front of the Wall Street Stock Exchange, a large bronze statue of a bull, ready to attack, appeared near the holiday tree. Now the “bull from Wall Street” is so popular that there is a line of people who want to touch it “for good luck” and take a picture.
Rietumu Bank also has its own bull – an Art Deco figure was acquired in Germany and installed on the ground floor of RCC in 2010. Since then, the handsome bull not only decorates the building, but, hopefully, brings us all good luck!
Our online card follows the design of the printed card, with Bach's music playing off-screen: https://www.rietumu.com/ny2021
And now about our 2021 calendar. It is dedicated to our home city of Riga, which will celebrate its 820th anniversary next year. After all, it was here that Rietumu Bank was established.
The cross-cutting theme of the calendar can be described as “Riga in detail”. On its pages, you will find photographs of interesting buildings and objects of the urban environment that we offer you to take a fresh look at and consider those nuances, details and perspectives that one may not have paid much attention to before. Therefore, in each of these objects a special fragment is highlighted – be it a statue or a bas-relief, which is unique in itself. In the description for each month, you can find out interesting facts. By the way, the calendar also starts with a statue of a bull.
Attention to detail has always been a sign of quality. As Gustave Flaubert said: “Le bon Dieu est dans le détail” – “The good God is in the detail.” Everything that is done, that is left to people – everything should be done thoroughly, with attention to detail, since they are valuable and important. This remains true in architecture, art, business and everyday human relations.
When speaking figuratively, such a view can help us look from a new angle not only at our city, but also at our affairs and our life in general. It is always useful, and especially today!
P.S. The author of all the illustrations for the calendar is a wonderful photographer from St Petersburg, Ivan Varshavsky, who has been living and working in Riga for several years.
The Swedish Ambassador to Latvia, Ms Karin Hőglund, recently hosted an online broadcast from the photo exhibition “Icons – an Exhibition about the Right to Exist”, which opened in early December in Rietumu Gallery.