The entire world on a picture postcard
I love postcards of all kinds and I collect just about everything postcard wise. I also go crackers over vintage photos; but postcards are my main love.
Pictures in books are useful and interesting but postcards are better- mostly because there are so many of them. Quirky views of small town attractions from the turn of the 20th century are a marvel. Water towers, post offices, courthouses, all kinds of buildings that are simply utilitarian today, but that had pride of place in small towns then, are some of the best parts of the postcard universe. Early cards, produced by German lithography (the best) made downtown buildings look like fairy castles. Even cards showing citys' grubbier bits were made glorious by German lithographers.
Then there are RPPC (Real photograph postcards) which are simply amazing. They are actual photographs, transferred onto postcard blanks & they were popular from about the beginning of the 20th century until about the 1960's.
RPPCs show the world as it was in all it's muddy mess. I have RPPCs of small town downtowns with unpaved dirt roads; small clusters of about to topple over buildings and very few wires (if any) for electricity or telephone service. Houses have unscreened windows (bugs!!); horses, not cars, transport people, and the wildness that mostly doesn't exist in our hygienic existence is easy to see and appreciate (from a distance ---- I really like window screening). There are RPPCs of actresses, showgirls, comics, vaudevillians, brides, grooms, wedding parties, children, parties, picnics, dances, industry, farming, funerals and cemeteries- everything really. You are holding history in the palm of your hand.
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Postcards were also a way of staying in touch with loved ones for very little money, over great distances. Starting in 1896 when the first picture postcards became available; you could send an inexpensive, brightly colored picture of where you lived to your family and friends thousands of miles away. Those first cards, with their emphasis on showing the grandeur of the place you lived- magnificent county courthouses; important looking business blocks, large hotels downtown near railroad depots, along with artesian wells; water pumping works, corset factories & the like - were useful advertising as well. Come to my town -( the one shown by German lithography - not the RPPCs)- -and see how well we are all living here.
Postcards are also place markers, sort of archeological in nature (at least I think so) for a world that no longer exists and can never be brought back. California cards from the turn of the century, prior to the movie studio era, show vast swathes of farmland and magnificent Victorian homes surrounded by acres of empty space. Gone, but not forgotten.
& then there are the WOW factor cards - those wonderfully cheerful, mostly faked vistas from the linen card era right through the magnificently cheesy 50's-70's chrome postcards.
People actually mailed letters then. They sent cards to friends & their friends tucked them away in albums, or possibly in their handwritten diaries. What a world it was.
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Pictures are stories and stories are some of the most important things we give each other. Buy a postcard or two (or three, or four, or five, or six...). and bring the past back to life.
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My prices and shipping are ultra reasonable and I am always happy to chat about my beauties.
I am always available for custom orders - brides take notice! - a set of vintage postcards of the city/town/area where you are celebrating your nuptials are wonderfully useful for table markers, or for save the date cards.
Teachers too - purchase some historic postcard views for use in social studies classes. They are easily downloaded to a computer and can be easily shared with your students.
Haha - fool your friends - send them a vintage postcard from where you are staying now - retro travel & tourist cards are neat to see & send.
" Blizzard in the suburbs
-------the mailman
And the poet walking"
Jack Kerouac, Book of Haikus
