A peculiar photograph hangs at the top of a rack of greeting cards. It shows a stern-looking woman, wearing sneakers and vacuuming in a horse pasture. And, judging by her grimace, she isn’t exactly pleased by the task.

Inside are the words she, and ladies everywhere, may be thinking: “A woman’s work is never done.”

The card, most would agree, is funny. But the story behind it is even funnier.

“I like a picture that has a story, even if you don’t know what the story is,” said Mark Baldwin, president of Borealis Press, the small Surry printing company that manufactures the card, along with dozens of others just like it, and has managed to make a name for itself in a competitive greeting cards market.

The woman in the photo is Pauline Torrey. Not only does she know her way around a vacuum cleaner, she also works at Borealis, counting and packing orders for the company’s products.

The cards featuring her housekeeping, or horse-keeping, skills caught the attention of the Oreck people, since Torrey was using one of their vacuums. Oreck liked the photo so much that they placed an order of their own, Baldwin said.

And so it goes for other items at Borealis, where there is a story behind every card that the company prints.

For example, the happy little girl hugging a giant white dog on one card is Baldwin’s own granddaughter.

Another card shows twin toddlers, one looking rather annoyed. The photo is a family picture contributed by one of Borealis’ merchants.

And the card featuring a woman jumping over a mud puddle while wearing white sandals was the subject of a friendly debate between Baldwin and his business partner, David Williams. The two men disagreed over whether the card would sell. Turns out it did.

“We find different things funny,” Baldwin said.

In its 14 years, Borealis has managed to make a decent dent in a business dominated by the likes of Hallmark and American Greetings. Last year, the company sold 3 million cards.

While their products are sold locally in places like Rooster Brothers and Monroe Salt Works in Ellsworth and New Cargoes in Blue Hill, only 8 percent of their sales come from within Maine. Their products are sold worldwide; one customer even reported stopping in a gift shop while hiking a mountain pass in New Zealand, only to find a rack of Borealis cards for sale.

When the company opened in 1990, Baldwin’s intention was to make how-to posters, primarily for children and schools. But the market for informative posters was weak, he would learn, and Borealis started printing greeting cards.

Their cards were different. They were square and featured black-and-white photos, two taboo practices for greeting cards at the time.

By 1994, Baldwin and his crew started to pair the photos with edgy, intellectual quotations.

Sometimes the quotes came from famous people, like author Mark Twain or poet Ogden Nash.

Other times, he and Williams wrote them themselves.

“I would just stare at the photo and write something,” said Baldwin, a former Washington, D.C., journalist. Williams was just the opposite: he would chose or write a quote and then find a fitting photograph.

Sometimes they take their own photographs. More often, though, artwork is contributed by professionals. Borealis cards have routinely featured work by the late photographer George Daniell, well known for his portraits of celebrities.

In the beginning, the company had four employees and a single-color press. These days, there are 12 workers at the company’s office, located in what used to be the local general store on Surry Road. That makes Borealis the second largest employer in Surry, a quiet and rural town of about 1,300 people.

Today, the company has a seven-color press. It also prints magnets, journals, door hangers and holiday cards.

And while other greeting card companies have been experiencing flat sales, sales for Borealis products have grown consistently from year to year.

“We are always the top one or two cards sold in Barnes & Noble, according to the numbers we get back,” Baldwin said.

Customers, he said, seem to have an emotional attachment to certain cards. Some buy in bulk, like the Idaho woman who makes a $500 purchase once a year. Others buy single cards, to give away or keep for themselves. A few have even complained when the company stopped printing their favorites.

Susan Bergiera, owner of Amaryllis clothing store on Exchange Street in Portland, said the cards are popular because they are universal. They can be given to celebrate something or nothing at all.

“They speak to everybody in some way,” she said. “They can be fun or warm or gentle, anything.

“These are cards you look at for more than a glance.”

Bergiera said the display case is a focal point in her store; customers gather around it and laugh.

Her favorite card happens to be one of the company’s best sellers. It shows a spiky-haired child staring at a bird on a windowsill and features a quote by the late Sister Barbara Hance, who opened a homeless shelter in Ellsworth. “Show me a day when the world wasn’t new,” it says.

Hance was a close friend of Baldwin. The quote is something she told him a few days before she died in 1993.

“Street photography” is what Baldwin calls the images on his cards. Sometimes, the action in the photo is obvious. More often, though, it is obscure, which is exactly how Baldwin prefers it.

“I like ambiguity,” he said. “I kind of like the process of making odd connections.”

One of his favorites shows a man standing in what appears to be a conference room, holding up a giant fish and smiling at something just beyond the camera’s view. Inside it says, “The more a photograph tells you, the less you know.”

Those words, Baldwin said, are the essence of Borealis.

“People take these cards very personally,” he said. “I like them to be true, I like them to be true about something.”

U.S. Greeting card industry

Consumers in the United States buy 7 billion greeting cards each year, accounting for nearly $7.5 billion in retail sales.

The average U.S. household buys 30 greeting cards per year.

On average, a person receives 20 cards each year.

Women purchase more than 80 percent of all greeting cards.

Birthday cards are the most popular ?everyday? type of card. Christmas cards are the most popular seasonal cards.

There are an estimated 3,000 greeting card publishers in the United States.

The custom of sending cards can be traced to the ancient Chinese, who exchanged messages of good will to celebrate the New Year.

SOURCE: The Greeting Card Association