The Caustic Club
The Caustic Club is an organisation dedicated to preserving human connections in conditions of acceptable dignity. Excessive displays of sentimentality are not prohibited, but they are strongly discouraged. Its activities are based primarily on the exchange of cards and the more or less controlled use of irony.
The Caustic Club also has one distinctive feature: the way it broadcasts.
Writing a card officially makes you a member.
Receiving one puts you at a significant risk of contamination.
Experts have not yet been able to determine precisely how the phenomenon spreads. The initial symptoms generally include an involuntary smile, mild irritation, or an uncontrollable urge to retort. In 5.32 per cent of recorded cases, the subject reoffends. In the remaining cases, there is insufficient data or witnesses stubbornly refuse to cooperate.
The Club currently takes the form of a collection of cards. This situation is bound to escalate. Other creations will gradually join the ranks in order to extend our influence across the realm of human interaction.
At this stage, it’s probably too late.
You’re already a member of the Club.
Welcome.
Diogène de Rance
The Caustic Club currently has a president.
Nobody elected him, but that does not prevent him from carrying out his duties with remarkable diligence.
His name is Diogenes de Rance, a misanthropic frog and lover of luxury goods.
In an ideal world, Diogenes would spend his days on a water lily, sipping cocktails and judging humanity from afar. Unfortunately, he has an expensive passion for sturgeon caviar and premium dragonflies. He is therefore forced to to have a job, pay his bills and live as part of society.
A situation he is coping with with only relative dignity.
Diogène apparaît sur toutes les cartes de la première collection. Il est le premier représentant du Club, mais probablement pas le dernier. D’autres personnages viendront sans doute agrandir cette étrange assemblée au fil du temps.
In the meantime, he’s the one who welcomes new members.
The Foundress
This biography was written by Anma herself, in the third person singular, as important people do, evidently.
Anma spent several years working in the social and humanitarian sector, observing human nature in all its splendid reality. She could have drawn some reassuring conclusions from this.
It was not the case.
Amongst other flaws, she also has British roots, which no doubt explains her stubborn attachment to the lost art of the greeting card.
Then, like any thirty-something city-dweller going through a back-to-basics phase, she took up making handmade soap. That’s how she discovered the joys of caustic soda: a subtle burn, almost imperceptible at first, which sets in slowly before revealing just how harmful it can be.
An experience that was memorable enough to inspire the name of this project.
The Caustic Club came into being somewhere between these observations on humanity, a slight weariness with the pressure to be constantly happy, and a period of spending enough time in the stationery aisles to arouse the staff’s suspicion.
The intention was simply to create a few cards.
Since then, events have taken a slightly more worrying turn. A chairperson has been appointed without an election. Members are joining without going through the admission procedure. Cases of infection continue to be reported.
At this stage, it is difficult to determine whether Anma set up the Club or whether the Club simply used her to come into being.
The creative process
The creative process looks rather noble from a distance. Up close, it’s mostly a lot of coffee and a few well-kept grudges.
My characters are inspired by everyday life – more specifically, by the little betrayals it inflicts on me with suspicious regularity. When Valérie, my colleague, left me for a better life, I was genuinely happy for her. And devastated for myself. A card was born out of this dissonance, and apparently, it speaks to you.
La série Caustic Kids, elle, doit tout à mon expérience de mère de jeunes enfants indomptables. Une source d’inspiration absolument intarissable. Un jour, mon fils s’est convaincu qu’il était une lionne et n’attend depuis qu’une chose : qu’on le libère enfin pour rejoindre la savane. Une carte en est née. Elle ne l’a pas dissuadé, au contraire.
I create my cards on a Mac, using a stylus tablet: Krita for the illustrations, Affinity for the layout. You can see the exact method in action opposite. When it comes to colour shades, I’ve developed what can only be described as a semi-confessed addiction: twelve almost identical shades of green are enough to keep me engrossed for hours, what with RGB on screen, CMYK for printing and export settings that whisk me off into intergalactic dimensions I didn’t even know existed the day before.
Until August 2026, my cards will be printed in Switzerland. A trip abroad is set to change everything: my production is moving to England, the Mecca of greeting cards — a country that is just as passionate about pudding as it is about the lost art of the greeting card. My British roots will therefore have finally served a purpose, and this will make posting to my customers much easier. The next chapter promises to be rich in raw material: off to Asia, in search of new sources of inspiration, and perhaps the very cradle of caustic humour itself. As for the cards, they’ll continue to arrive on time.