For Soviet soldiers during WWII, the standard way to send letters home from the front was to fold them in delicate triangles. It may have been for practical purposes at the time, but now the surviving letters and beautiful artifacts of a troubled era. According to this fascinating article: “During the war, the mails were brought for free from the front to home. It could not have been differently, because probably the postage stamps would have been the last item the halting logistic support would have delivered to the front. Even so, postcards and envelopes were shortages. The soldiers’ genius has thus created, right in the first months of the war, the format that was a letter and its own envelope in one. The folding process is very similar to how we, in our childhood, folded our soldier’s shako, knowing nothing about the triangular soldier’s letters.” Click through to see some of these elegant folded letters from WWII, and be sure to check out Poemas del río Wang for more.

[via kottke]