Category: Art Postcards

Penny Provocations

Beware! This is what the vote will do to husbands. Four cards from a strange 1909 anti-suffrage series.

Today, we’re looking at four rare postcards from a twelve-card series published by the Dunston-Weiler Lithograph Company of New York in 1909. The complete set buffoons the women’s suffrage movement through role-reversal cartoons depicting men holding babies and scrubbing on washboards. The popular message was that women would be turned masculine, greedy, uncaring, and unfaithful once given the vote. Our grouping includes card numbers 1, 3, 4, and 10. The most emblematic is Suffragette Madonna, which has been the focus of substantial scholarship.

A man stands in three-quarter view, dark hair combed back, a thin mustache. He cradles an infant against his shoulder with one arm. He wears a white pinstriped shirt, cuffs fastened with round studs, a red necktie, and a wide red sash draped diagonally across his chest. The infant, dressed in a white slip with pink ribboned booties, drinks from a small bottle held in the man's free hand. Behind his head sits a circular gold medallion ringed with a laurel wreath, forming a halo. A blue paneled backdrop holds two dark ceramic vessels on a shelf, one on either side of the halo.
A man in a floral red-and-white patterned robe, cinched with a tasseled cord belt, holds two crying infants in white gowns against his chest. His brow is drawn, his expression strained. In the upper left corner, a circular inset vignette shows a woman addressing a crowd from a bunting-draped stage under the caption "Let the Women Run the Government," with an American flag and a pitcher and glass on the speaker's table.
A young woman stands facing forward, dark hair pinned beneath an oversized straw hat banded in yellow with a large red bow at the crown. She wears a puff-sleeved white blouse tucked into blue denim overalls, hands in the front pockets. Red-and-white polka-dot stockings show above black heeled shoes trimmed with small red bows. A ruled vertical-line pattern fills the background panel behind her.
A couple seen from behind, mid-embrace. The man wears a brown suit; his bowler hat falls from his head and his walking stick drops from his hand in a gesture of surprise. The woman wears a long red coat-dress with a row of covered buttons down the back and an oversized black hat trimmed in pink roses. Her skirt has swept up with the motion, showing a white ruffled petticoat and a stockinged leg above a black heeled shoe.

Each card colorfully illustrates the presumed ill-effects of role reversal in a domestic or civic scene. Men feed infants, wash clothes, or otherwise occupy the era-assigned roles for women. Meanwhile, women take on masculine dress, public authority, and open flirtation.

In the first card, a father poses as a religious icon, complete with laurel leaves and halo, while nursing a baby with a bottle. Another card repeats the theme with a father annoyed by two crying infants. A tiny inset shows his wife commanding a political rally and calling for women to run government. The next card puts a young woman in coveralls under an enormous flopping hat, garments that speak to independence, work, and whimsy unbecoming of a lady. The last card shows a couple mid-embrace, with a headline suggesting sexual favors as an easy vote-getting behavior.

Across all four postcards, the palette includes saturated reds, blues, and golds, with exaggerated Edwardian dress rendered in the exacting art of lithographic printing. Though intentionally brusque, the cards were considered beautiful and humorous for obvious and covert reasons. Captions run along the bottom border in bold sans-serif type, and do as much comic work as the illustrations themselves.

All four cards are chromolithographs published by the Dunston-Weiler Lithograph Company of New York, copyrighted 1909. Three of these cards carry a gold-toned outer border created with the bronzing technique described in Gilded Goods. The fourth uses a plain blue-ruled border with no metallic finish. Each card includes a series number, a title band, and a copyright line naming the publisher.

These cards are unused and uncancelled, double-matted and handsomely framed, with only minor softening of corners. Each card alone is considered rare and small sets in presentation format are uncommon in the marketplace. Several complete sets are held in public and private collections. Catherine Palczewski’s 2005 academic essay in Quarterly Journal of Speech increases demand and value for these items compared to similar postcards of the era.

Four antique postcards displayed together in an ornate gilt wood frame with a wide cream mat, arranged left to right: Suffragette Madonna, Where Oh Where Is My Wandering Wife Tonight, Pantalette Suffragette in the Sweet Bye and Bye, and Suffragette Vote-Getting the Easiest Way. Each card sits in its own beveled mat opening within a scalloped, floral-carved gold frame.

Subject, scarcity, provenance, and condition are the top variables that govern the market value for vintage postcards, but serious academic attention changes the equation. Once Palczewski examined this set and published an article, they went from cultural detritus to a documented contribution to the historical record. Palczewski identified the visual tropes (a male Madonna and feminized Uncle Sam), connected them to the verbal rhetoric of the anti-suffrage movement, and lent theory and vocabulary for later researchers and collectors to better interpret the materials.

Provenance, in this instance, is not just about who created or owned an object. It is also about who has looked at it seriously and left notes. A card with a known scholarly citation carries a paper trail that an anonymous postcard never gets. It brings it out of obscurity and into a realm of the studied object. From there, new analysis has a footing and further creative work may be inspired, too.

None of this changes the material object, a piece of lithographed cardstock, printed and mailed for a penny in 1909. What scholarship changes is the frame around it and what we can make of it today. Out of the thousands of anti-suffrage postcards produced in that era, these ones are still worth examining more than a century later.

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Gilded Goods

Today we’re looking at a group of twenty opulent floral postcards from the early 1900s. Botanical illustrations (roses, poppies, carnations, tulips, violets, cornflowers, hydrangeas, and gladiolus) are printed on rich metallic backgrounds.

Though these cards are not a matching set, they are of an era. At the time they were made, a rising middle class was creating new demand for affordable luxury items like fine papers, engraved calling cards, gilt-edged books, and gilded picture frames. Even a small amount of shiny detail on a penny postcard made it special.

Of the great many decorative and floral postcards, these ones do show their age. They were more common than their appearance suggest, and the luster that commanded so much attention a century ago has faded. The corners are softened or torn, and the writing is obscured. The background color itself is mottled, scratched, and often reveals an impression of the stamp or cancellation on the reverse. One card has developed a cloudy bloom across the front, just as verdigris slowly encroaches on the hue and texture of copper.

Meant to appear as gold, the metallic substance used was actually bronze powder, which tarnishes, rubs off, and browns with age. Printers were still experimenting with the best approach to reflective ink. As we’ll see, this wasn’t it.

Gilt postcard with white blossoms and red berries on a bronze ground, copyright 1909
Gilt postcard with red and pink geranium blooms on a scratched bronze ground
Gilt postcard with a red rose and a yellow rose on a bronze ground, copyright 1909
Gilt postcard with red and white tulips on a bronze ground
Embossed gilt postcard with red and white carnations on a bronze ground
Gilt postcard with red poppies on a bronze ground
Gilt postcard with red flowers on a tarnished bronze ground

Print shops called this process bronzing. A lithographer first ran the sheet through the press, using a sticky varnish where the shiny effect was wanted. While the varnish stayed tacky, a worker daubed the sheet with fine metal powder. The powder adhered to the wet varnish and fell away from the dry paper around it. A soft brush removed the excess. In the legendary 1880 trade manual, The Grammar of Lithography, bronzing is described among a series of finishing techniques done after the main color printing was complete. The process required a steady hand and a practiced eye. Too little powder left the image looking thin and patchy, and the loose metal dust was a known respiratory contaminant in the print shop.

Bronzing was a specialty trade but it wasn’t particularly rare. In the Heinrich Steinberg printing supply catalog, bronzing ink was offered to lithographers and letterpress printers as a stock item, sold as one option among many inks and materials a working print shop would order regularly. Bronzing was a routine commercial finish, sold as a fancy extra.

Gilt postcard with a pink rose on a scratched bronze ground

Chemists worked on a better recipe for decades. A 1922 German patent described a new formula for mixing metals into lacquer inks. When metallic elements (most often copper and zinc) are added, they lock into a harder, more water-resistant film that oxidize in the air and leaves a slick surface as the ink dries. However, the oxidation that stabilized the lacquer ink is the same process that tarnished the metallic additives. The finely ground metal flakes keep reacting with the oxygen, even over a century.

This cornflower card shows the die-stamped details that give the petals a sculpted, three-dimensional texture. Embossing is a mechanical process done by pressing the card stock between engraved metal plates. Print shops often combined bronzing and embossing for extra visual weight, further pushing a commercial mechanical process to produce an object appreciated for its artistry.

Embossed gilt postcard with blue cornflowers on a bronze ground

Victorian and Edwardian greetings commonly carried rhymed text, including references to well-known verses. Robert Herrick’s 1648 poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time begins with the line, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…” and “In the desert a fountain is springing…” is adapted from Lord Byron’s 1816 poem Stanzas to Augusta with one word changed. In that era, card publishers borrowed freely, rarely credited the poets, and also employed their own writers to produce the florid messages alongside each bouquet.

The Victorian language of flowers, or floriography, assigned a specific sentiment to each bloom. Violets stood for modesty. Roses meant love, more devoted as the color deepened. A sender might choose a card’s flower to express a tender sentiment, though mailing it as a postcard was no secret. Readers of the period were expected to recognize and decode those meanings inside a new middle-class code of conduct. Sending the right card with the right flower and verse reflected the rules of polite society.

Gilt postcard with purple lilacs and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with a pink chrysanthemum and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with a pink rose and forget-me-nots and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with purple violets and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with a red rose and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with red poppies and a printed verse by Mary Clemmer
Gilt postcard with red geraniums and roses and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with a pink rose and a printed verse from Robert Herrick
Gilt postcard with orange and pink gladiolus and a printed verse
Gilt postcard with purple violets tied in a ribbon and a printed verse

Though bent and tarnished, these postcards are no less charming more than a hundred years later. Some of the shimmer is still there, but the smoky ochre slowly replacing it has its own sort of visual value.

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Unpacking Gratitude

Old glass sheds light on the timeless tasks of analysis and appreciation.

After a long period of away, I came home to a small cardboard box in the entry hall. My sister brought it in and placed it there while she was checking on the house. Shipped from a friend in Pennsylvania, it wasn’t waiting too long. Still, dust gathers in the summer sun.

I pulled back the layers of packing tape to reveal a sturdy shoebox full of old postcards. Surprised? No, I knew they were coming. But, I had only a few clues what the cards might be about. I could have guessed but it wasn’t necessary. The cards were labeled and paperclipped (egads!) to reveal a nicely organized collection of Medieval stained glass in churches and cathedrals throughout Europe.

These cards were collected by the authority on the subject, Dr. Meredith Lillich, who passed away this year. She used them as convenient and cost effective reference tools for the subject she studied, visited, and wrote about in the course of a storied career. Through a series of friendly connections, the cards were entrusted to me. I am pleased to be the postcard lady, especially if it includes the chance to hold a small part of a beautiful legacy.

  • Abbey of Our Lady of Epau founded by Queen Berengere of Navarre in 1230

I have looked at each card once, noticing the usual attributes of place and subject matter, along with the paper, printing method, era, and condition. So many beautiful chrome color cards capturing astounding architectural details and the intricate glass embedded in lofty ceiling and windows. A number of images are real photos in black & white, and there are even a few drawings and sketches. Most have the printed particulars from their source, and only a rare pencil mark from Dr. Lillich. Her thoughts on the matter are in her many scholarly works and in the memories of those she mentored.

Looking at the cards, I noted the difficult photographic task to represent the God-like glow of sunlight through colored glass. This highly sculptural substance is meant for us to understand and feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, in situ. Capturing its true effect on paper is a technical feat.

  • High Priest of the Temple of the Sun, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
  • The Angel Raphael, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
  • A Ship (circa 1530), King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK
  • Shepherds with their sheep, King’s College Chapel, Cambridge, UK

I suppose my friend called me because he’s been following my efforts with The Posted Past. At first, my only charge was to comprehend the scale and dimensions of Dad’s collection. Then, it took time to find some finesse in researching and writing about postcards (which are about everything). Now I am the steward of a simple but sneaky mission to stay in touch. As I do, these wonderful opportunities arise. Slow momentum is so satisfying.

For example, Dad was still alive on the day I found the hidden trove of real photo postcards from the 1920 Olympics. Convinced of their cultural significance, I hopped into the room wondering who I should contact. The Olympics! Call them directly?

“Yep,” he said, and smiled quietly.

Years later, those rare relics are now entrusted to the Olympic Museum in Lausanne, Switzerland. I’m incredibly proud of that exchange, and grateful to the kind and talented staff who facilitated such a homecoming. No doubt, Dad is cheering from the stadium upstairs.

What comes around, goes around. Postcards are sweet evidence of the time we set aside to stay in touch and to foster each others’ dreams. My aim is to keep just such kindness in circulation for another century or so.

Precipice of Peace: Postcards from 1920 Antwerp Olympics

Trade Card Tricks

Three cards were slipped into a box of laundry powder in 1882. Someone kept them. The Victorian collecting impulse worked then, and it still does.

These three Victorian trade cards were issued in 1882 by J.D. Larkin & Co. of Buffalo, New York, and printed by Cosack & Co., one of the most accomplished chromolithography firms in the country at the time. Two cards advertise Boraxine, a borax-based laundry powder; the third promotes Creme Oatmeal Toilet Soap. Premiums slipped into product packages, these trade cards were designed to be collected.

Though selling soap and cleaning powder, none of the three shows domestic labor. Instead, each presents an aspirational female figure representing a Victorian version of beauty, cleanliness, and high design. The cards are notable for the printing mastery, expensive gilding, and their confident use of Aesthetic Movement and Japonisme design conventions.

Both the Larkin Company and Cosack & Co. went on to significant histories. Buffalo’s industrial power in that era were remarkable, and the craft of chromolithography was at its height. The cards survive as evidence of the Gilded Age and still hold their value a century later.

Three chromolithograph trade cards, J.D. Larkin & Co. / Cosack & Co., Buffalo, N.Y., 1882

Chromolithography had transformed commercial advertising in the decade following the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. The technique required drawing each color separately onto a flat limestone plate, then passing the paper through the press once per color, building the image in successive transparent layers. A finished card of this complexity required a dozen or more passes. The result was a depth and saturation of color that earlier printing processes could not achieve.

Cosack & Co. was among the firms that defined the standard. Founded in Buffalo in 1864 by Hugh Clay and Herman Cosack, the firm described itself as “The Most Complete Lithographic Establishment in the United States” and maintained offices in New York, Chicago, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Hartford, and Boston. Buffalo’s position at the intersection of the Great Lakes and the Erie Canal made it a center for manufacturing and commerce. Printing follows industry, and the company produced trade cards, baseball cards, railroad promotions, Civil War memorial prints, and sporting prints.

None of the three cards depicts domestic work. The women shown are not laundering, scrubbing, or cleaning. Victorian soap manufacturers consistently presented their products through images of the comfort and refinement that cleanliness was understood to produce, rather than images of the labor it required. Cleanliness carried significant moral and social weight in this era. Advertising positioned soap not merely as a cleaning agent but as a indicator of respectable domestic life.

Boraxine was Larkin’s second product, introduced shortly after the company’s founding in 1875. Its advertising copy addressed practical concerns obliquely, but the trade cards operated on a different value system. The cards were premium collectibles in the trade card collection craze that preceded postcards. Their purpose was to be kept, collected, and admired as objects themselves.

The collectible strategy belonged to Elbert Hubbard, Larkin’s brother-in-law and advertising partner from 1878 onward. Hubbard recognized that inserting a chromolithograph into a box of laundry powder gave the customer a reason to purchase routinely. The marketing strategy was driven by the collecting impulse and was itself an object that affirmed the class status of buyers.

In 1885, Hubbard formalized this approach into what he called “The Larkin Idea”. Factory direct sales with valuable premiums bundled into combination boxes at the original price of the soap. The strategy transformed Larkin from a regional manufacturer into one of the largest mail-order businesses in the country, eventually employing 4,000 people with annual sales of $28 million. In 1903, Larkin commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to design a headquarters building on Seneca Street. It was Wright’s first commercial commission, completed in 1906.

The Victorian trade card era ran from roughly 1876 to the late 1890s, when improvements in magazine color printing reduced the novelty and the format declined. At its peak in the 1880s, trade cards were the most prevalent form of advertising in American commercial life. They were distributed at store counters, tucked into product packages, and carried by traveling salesmen. The collecting culture around them was substantial. Parlor albums were produced specifically to hold them, and publications offered guidance on arrangement and display.

Cosack & Co. continued operating under successive partnerships through the early twentieth century. The Larkin Company closed in the 1940s. Sadly, the Larkin Administration Building was demolished in 1950.

These 1882 cards predate “The Larkin Idea” by three years. The contemporary collecting impulse that Hubbard designed them to provoke also preserved them for more than a century. These three cards survive because they were kept long after the product was gone. They are evidence of a printing firm, a soap company, and a city at a confident moment when quality communication was rightly presumed to outlast its commercial purpose.

To Read More

The Larkin Company — Buffalo Stories Archives offers solid documentation of Larkin’s rise, buffalostories.com

Chromolithography and Trade Cards — The Winterthur Museum holds one of the foremost collections of Victorian trade cards and published research on lithography production, digitalcollections.winterthur.org

The Larkin Administration Building — The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation maintains records of the 1903 building, demolished in 1950, franklloydwright.org

Borax in the 1880s — The Borax/Death Valley history is well documented at the Borax Museum, Furnace Creek, California, nps.gov/deva

“The Larkin Idea” — The Henry Ford Museum blog tells this story, thehenryford.org

Herman T. Koerner and Cosack & Co. — Western New York History is a good source for more, wnyhistory.org

Trade Cards — A Short History at Cornell University, Waxman Collection, rmc.library.cornell.edu

Robert Jay, The Trade Card in Nineteenth-Century America. University of Missouri Press, 1987.

Jay T. Last, The Colour Explosion: Nineteenth-Century American Lithography. Hillcrest Press, 2005.

The Fool Knows

A fool in full red tunic, tights, and pointed cap riding a half-finished horse. In 1905, Picasso was 23 and in the middle of his Rose Period, when circus performers, acrobats, and jesters were recurring dreams. He saw what the Fool knows, and the rest of us learn along the way.

No one can quite pin down the origin of April Fool’s Day. One theory traces it to the shift from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar in 1582, and New Year’s Day from April 1 to January 1. Those who merrily celebrated the old date were mocked for their foolishness. Other evidence points to the Roman festival of Hilaria at the end of March, when people dressed in disguises and merriment was mandatory. A third argument simply blames the weather. Spring being notoriously unreliable, the fool is the farmer who trusts an early warm day.

Every court kept a fool, the one person licensed to speak the subtext. Under cover of bells and absurdity, they told the king what the courtiers would never. They didn’t matter and slipped away deftly, so they got away with it.

Shakespeare’s fools still deliver their wisdom from the stage. Touchstone sees everyone clearly in As You Like It. Feste in Twelfth Night diagnoses each character’s self-deception with a song. The Fool’s detachment is not ignorance; their folly is not fantasy. It is practical sense and functional freedom. The fool is often the one who tells the full tale as we go.

Let’s not forget all the fun in foolishness. Duckboy Cards gave us these guffaws from Hamilton Montana in the late 20th century.

In the Tarot, the Fool is the zero card, about to step off a cliff with a small satchel. The Fool’s journey is curious, flexible, and nonlinear, akin to the Buddhist beginner’s mind with the great powers of not-knowing.

The disciple Paul wrote that followers were fools for Christ, who knew that worldly measures were the real absurdities. Yurodivye, the holy fool in Russian Orthodox culture, courted ridicule and apparent madness as a form of spiritual freedom.

The Feast of Fools, celebrated across Europe in medieval centuries, inverted the church hierarchy for a day. Junior clergy elected a mock bishop and sacred ritual was gently parodied. The highest were made low for a day. The Church tolerated it for centuries, perhaps because it understood the release it provided.

In each of these traditions, foolishness is not failure. The Fool observes with a keen eye, collects information and assets, plays his cards carefully, and keeps his palm open.

Just such a jester has been riding alongside us this season. In Lucky Us, we find that only a fool pursues luck outright. In Spring Cleaning, earth itself foolishly hopes despite all evidence of winter. In Healing Ward, nurses stringing crepe paper garlands for a room full of wounded men, and show us the beautiful absurdity of insisting on Christmas.

My thanks to you fellow fools who keep reading. Only you know why!

To Read More

Shakespeare’s Fools — All the fools’ best lines from the Folger Library

Picasso’s Rose Period — From 1904–1906, Picasso absorbed French culture in warm pink and orange light

The Feast of Fools — A matter of great Catholic controversy still

The Tarot Fool — The British Museum’s collection of vintage Tarot cards

April Fool’s Day — Museum of Hoaxes theorizes the origins of the holiday

Shakespearean Soap

In the 1880s, someone figured Shakespeare had the perfect verse for selling soap.

Rare Cards ~ Seven Victorian Trade Cards Selling Dobbins’ Electric Soap

In Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Jacques delivers his monologue in Act II, Scene VII, observing human life with world-weary detachment. He sketches out seven distinct chapters of a human life, from mewling infancy to toothless old age, with equal parts affection and irony. One of the most quoted passages in all of Shakespeare, by the 1880s it was deeply embedded in popular culture — the kind of verse that some households knew by heart.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

Dobbins’ Electric Soap was manufactured by I. L. Cragin & Co. of Philadelphia and had been on the market since the mid-1860s. By the early 1880s, the company was advertising heavily through trade cards, chromolithographic collectibles that matched the indulgences of the Gilded Age. Cragin’s innovation was to produce not a single card but a series of seven that required the collector to buy a bar of soap each time. Get the certificate from your grocer, and the full set arrived by mail free of charge.

Philly, 1880s. Shakespeare meets laundry.

Front: Each card is a vivid chromolithograph on a warm gold ground with a bold red border, a consistent visual identity that makes the cards a set. The figures are drawn in a coarse comic style, expressive and exaggerated, with each character placed in a domestic or outdoor scene with a bar of Dobbins soap nearby.

First, a round-faced nurse in a white mobcap seated in a rocking chair, holding a squirming naked infant over a washbasin. Card Two shows a sulky schoolboy in a red jacket and yellow-green plaid knickerbockers, satchel over one shoulder. The lover on Card Three is a lanky figure in a gold waistcoat and plaid trousers, leaning against a bureau in a disheveled bedroom.

The soldier on Card Four is wild-haired and red-faced, bent over a green barrel-tub in his uniform trousers and braces, and a sword against the wall behind him. Card Five presents a rotund man in a blue coat, leaning back in his chair with the serene self-satisfaction of someone accustomed to receiving gifts. Card Six is an elderly Harlequin figure in a polka-dotted costume with red stockings, tumbling in mid-air. The final card is a woman in a yellow apron leaning over a green wooden tub, and a billowing human figure made entirely of suds.

Reverse: Black text on cream stock with the full Shakespeare speech across all seven cards, each picking up the verse where the last left off. The final card identifies the source: As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII.

Below the verse, each card runs a version of the same offer in slightly varied language: collect a grocer’s certificate for each bar purchased and mail seven of them to 116 South 4th Street, Philadelphia. Without the certificate, the price for the set is 25 cents.

Each card presents a few product features: no wash boiler, no rubbing board, no house full of steam. Card Four warns against unscrupulous imitations and instructs buyers to ask for Dobbins’ Electric Soap by name. The printer’s imprint for Chas. Shields’ Sons, 20 & 22 Gold Street, New York appears at the foot of each reverse.

Production: These high-quality commercial chromolithographs likely date to the early 1880s, after the business had been in operation for more than a decade. The color registration is precise throughout, the figure work confident and expressive, and the gold-and-red palette gives the set a unified identity that still reads as a coherent series. The illustration style and rich production values mirror the opulent aspirations of the era.

Collectibility: Complete sets of themed trade card series are uncommon; most were distributed individually and rarely survived intact. The Shakespeare framework, the quality of the printing, and the conceptual ambition of the campaign make this set particularly distinctive. It appeals to trade card collectors, Victorian advertising historians, Shakespeare enthusiasts, and ephemera collectors with a taste for the literary and the delightfully absurd.

new Rarities Room

Our new space for the old stuff that no one ever threw away – yay!

Mycelium Moments

Reed Fowler is a textile artist, pastor, and writer. Originally from Vermont, he now calls Minnesota home. Reed taught themselves to sew at a young age, following in the path of their grandma and aunt, and fell in love with weaving in college. Reed’s dad instilled in him an embodied love and care for the spaces and people he lives with, expressed through craft.

Reed is a member of the Weaver’s Guild of MN, and a founding member of a queer-centered intentional community, where they live with their spouse, their four cats, and housemates. They love books about magical libraries, watching reality cooking shows, and dreaming about garden layouts, systems, and tea blends.

Q: Are there stories that came to you while looking through the Art Card bundle that was sent to you?

A: Unfolding pathways, roots, landscapes. Distance and closeness – across time, and geography. Timespans of creative practice, of months feeling like decades. Calling back to ourselves, to our embodiment, to the tactile. Mycelium below the surface.

Q: How has your relationship with these collages changed from first receiving the images, through the process of cutting and gluing, and to final finishing touches?

A: The relationship to empty space evolved over the course of the collages. Density, words, lines, space. I originally resisted the blank cards, choosing instead for one to collage atop an existing postcard, rather than dissembling it. The sharp contrast of new printed paper to what I knew had passed through many hands before it reached mine threw me at first.

Q: Among your creations, which images stand out and why?

A: The “All happiness this day” was one of the hardest for me to cut into – the postcard was from the 1920’s, and was the main card I received that had writing on it – it had already gone through the mail. The final collage it’s in makes my heart happiest. The collage on the existing postcard, with the line “home away from home” feels most aligned to when I was creating it – in a cabin at a state park, celebrating my 5th wedding anniversary with my spouse, crafting by lantern-light.

Q: Is collage similar or different from your regular studio practice?

A: Collage is one element of my regular studio practice, at least for my personal creative practices. I’m primarily (currently) a textile artist – working in wool and thread and fabric. Earlier in my life, I was more of a mixed-media artist, where collage featured more heavily. So now, when I need a creative outlet just for myself, or if I’m trying to think through a project, or feeling, I’ll often turn back towards mixed-media, and collage.

Q: If you could give and/or receive a postcard from anyone living or passed, who would it be and why?

A: My late grandfather. He shaped my current path in beautiful ways that he never knew, and I’d love a chance to send him a postcard and receive one in return.

Landing Patterns

Tom finally touches grass, and Lily paints impossible cats.

Tom’s rental car idled at a red light on University, three blocks from his apartment. He’d made it through Sky Harbor quickly, drove straight here without stopping for groceries or coffee or errands. Just land and figure out what’s next, he thought.

The apartment was small, on the second floor of a stucco complex built in the eighties. View of the parking lot. He’d signed the lease abruptly after Delia died. Left the house for Nina to handle. Since then—hotel rooms in Atlanta, crew bunks in Singapore, a fishing boat off Catalina.

He parked, climbed the stairs, unlocked the door to recycled air and silence, flipped through the mail piled on the counter from the last time he was here. He missed the last local election. There was a party in a park nearby. A local group is replacing trees that were damaged in the last freak storm.

He set his bag down, pulled out his phone, texted Nina before he could reconsider.

I’m in Tempe. Can we meet? That coffee shop you like?

Three dots appeared. Disappeared. Appeared again.

Yup, be up there tomorrow. 10am.

Tom exhaled. Opened the refrigerator, stared at nothing for a moment, and closed it. He sat on the couch, looked at the unpacked boxes, looked at the random furniture. Looked at his hands, and thought, tomorrow. Then he grabbed his keys to run out for a beer and a burrito.

At the coffee shop, Tom arrived early, ordered coffee he didn’t drink, watched the door. Nina came in exactly at ten. Saw him, hesitated, turned toward the line, but walked over to her dad instead.

“Hi.”

“Hi.”

Nina set her keys on the table and went to get her drink. A few minutes to breathe and focus while she waited in line. He was actually here. Wow.

Back at the table, Tom tried to start, stopped, and started again. Exasperated, he whispered a groan. “How do people do this?”

“Well, you always asked Mom.”

“Truth,” he conceded. “I keep getting on planes. Keep going up. Can’t figure out how to stay down.”

Nina’s face was careful, neutral. “I know. You send postcards.”

“Lonely postcards.”

“I like them.” She paused, a little surprised herself.

“This woman I know at work told me about her father. He came back from the internment camps different. Couldn’t talk about what he’d lost. Just went quiet. Disappeared into himself even when he was sitting right there.”

Tom blinked at her, stunned by the comparison. “I’m not—”

“I know you’re not. But you get away from a lot up there.”

Tom set his coffee down. “Look… I’m trying… to be present… more.”

“Okay.” Nina’s hands tightened around her cup.

“Let me know when you’re back, next,” she said slowly. “We could meet at your place. Maybe make it feel like home.”

“Sure. that’s good. It doesn’t feel like anything right now.”

They finished their coffee, scooted out of the booth, and hugged. Nina picked up her keys.

Tom drove back to the apartment. Stood in the doorway looking at the accumulation of a life he’d been avoiding.

He started with the kitchen. Unpacked Delia’s dishes, the set they’d used for at least thirty years. Put them in the cabinets. Drove to the grocery store, bought coffee and bread and eggs. Real food that would probably rot. Fine, that might actually be normal. Small steps. He’d try again tomorrow.

The knock came mid-morning. George opened the door to find Lily holding a canvas bag, Mai standing behind her with a patient smile.

Lily marched into the foyer, serious. “I brought MY paints.”

“She wanted to paint, here, with you,” Mai said.

“CATS! We want to paint cats,” she announced.

“Well then.” George stepped aside. “Come in.”

They set up at the kitchen table—Jennie’s old watercolor set now showing signs of use again. Lily arranged her brushes with care, filled a bowl with water, selected paper from the pad.

“Could you get the big book, Grandpa?” Lily asked.

George knew exactly the one she wanted. Large and heavy, and art book with full color illustrations. Yes, cats, and many more species with great examples of all variety to try one’s hand.

George pulled his chair to face the window. Lily pulled hers beside his. They worked together, silently, side by side. Lily’s brush moved in quick confident patterns. Bold strokes, loose shapes that captured moments more than detail.

George surprised himself by drawing with a sharp graphite pencil. His hands remembered motions he hadn’t used in years. Careful lines, patient shading, the disciplined attention that both he and Jennie loved.

Lily finished first. Held up her painting. “It’s not exactly right.”

“Tell me more…”

“The shape isn’t right. The lines don’t add up. It doesn’t look like a real cat.”

“Artists see differently than scientists,” George said. “Scientists measure. Artists feel. Both ways matter. Your colors are very bold.”

Lily considered this. Looked at his drawing, and said confident,”Yours is the scientist way.”

“Can I keep yours?”

“If I can keep yours.”

“Deal.”

Mai came back an hour later. Lily packed her supplies, carefully laying her paintings on the countertop to dry. At the door, she hugged George—quick, unselfconscious, generous.

After they left, George found a frame in the closet and mounted the entirely impossible animal—calm, loose, joyful. Hung it where he’d see it every morning.

The postcard arrived in Tucson ten days after Nora mailed it. Nina turned it over. Nora’s handwriting, smaller now, more compact.

Lunar New Year, red lanterns everywhere. The city transforms—fireworks, night markets, families. The work is good, the project is extending. Solitude still a gift.—N

Nina read it twice. Carried it inside. Pinned it to her wall beside the others. Seven postcards now, creating their own pattern. Different textiles, different messages, her same friend after all this time. She pulled out her phone, typed a response.

Got your latest. Glad you’re staying. Take your time.

Card Crossings

A magic carpet takes us to a far away photo show, and a beach scene brings back old memories.

Nina found Mrs. Hanabusa in the common room sorting groceries into cloth bags. The postcard was still in Nina’s hand—a Navajo textile in geometric patterns, black and white against red wool.

“Let me help,” Nina said, taking two bags.

Mrs. Hanabusa glanced at the card. “From your friend? The one who went to Taipei?”

“She just arrived.” Nina turned the card over.

Made it. Everything moves faster here. First night was a photo exhibit on Mt Nunhu. Already miss the slow mornings. —N

Funny, Nina had received Nora’s text with images from the show that night, long before the postcard arrived in her mailbox here in Tucson.

They walked to Mrs. Hanabusa’s room. Nina set the bags on the small counter. Mrs. H studied the postcard, her finger tracing the pattern.

“My grandparents had one like this. Hung in their house on the flower farm.” She paused. “My grandmother found it at a trading post in the twenties. She said the geometry reminded her of Japanese family crests. Clean lines. She hung it in the room where they did arrangements.”

Mrs. H’s voice stayed quiet, remembering. “After the war, when we came back from the camps, the farm was gone. But a neighbor had saved some things. The rug was one of them. Grandmother cried when she saw it. I was small, maybe seven. I didn’t understand then what it meant to get something back.”

She opened a drawer, pulled out a small wooden box. Inside lay perhaps a dozen postcards, all showing Ikebana arrangements with low, horizontal compositions in shallow containers. Pink and red cosmos rising from a white porcelain vase. Allium gigantium’s perfect spheres balanced with small lantana blooms. A giant monstera leaf with a canna lily and a white chrysanthemum.

Mrs. Hanabusa handed Nina the stack of cards. She flipped through slowly, admiring each floral design.

“My sister sent these from Osaka. Our grandmother taught the traditional way. These are more like her arrangements, traditional but made new.”

Mrs. H pointed to the one with the iris. Nina looked closer. The composition was deliberate. Bold strokes against a spare background.

“Your friend will send you more postcards?”

“She promised,” Nina replied.

“Good,” Mrs. H smiled. “We get bored without friends.”

George had haunted thrift stores his whole life. Mostly he looked for tools—socket wrenches, levels, hand planes that still had their blades. Things he could use or restore.

Now he looked for postcards too.

The Goodwill in Red Wing had a basket of them near the register. Fifty cents each. He sorted through slowly. Tourist shots of the Badlands. A faded view of the State Capitol. Then he found a few good ones.

A real photo postcard showing Lake Pepin framed by trees, “Father of Waters” etched in careful script. The water stretched wide and calm, clouds massed above the bluffs.

A color card of Minneapolis Public Library, the old red brick building with its round tower and arched windows. George remembered when they torn it down in 1951.

A chrome card showing a white horse leaning over a fence, red barn and farmhouse in the background.

And then—George stopped. Sugar Loaf Mountain near Winona. A beach scene, families on the sand, kids on playground equipment, swimmers in the water. The mountain rising behind them.

He was transported to that very day. Their family had been right there, doing exactly that. The kids running between the beach and the playground. The particular blue of the water. How his wife had packed sandwiches that got sand in them and nobody cared.

George bought all four cards. Two dollars total. At home he examined them under the desk lamp before he got to thinking about each message.

He wrote to Emma:

Found this real photo from Lake Pepin. “Father of Waters” they called it. Your wanderlust comes honestly—this river goes all the way to the Gulf. Love, Grandpa

To Jack:

Get to the good old libraries while you can. This one is gone already! Love, Grandpa

To Lily:

See how the fence posts get smaller as they go back? That’s tricky to draw! Give it a try. Love, Grandpa

He paused at the fourth card, and let out a small sigh. Sugar Loaf Mountain, seems like another lifetime. Finally, he wrote:

This one is for you, kiddo. Reminds me of you and the guys and Mom. Fun times! Love, Dad

George added addresses and stamps. Put on his coat and walked to the mailbox, a short stretch of the legs that he now enjoyed. A chickadee called from the pine tree across the street—its clear two-note song cutting through the cold afternoon air.

wake up with wanderlust, too?

Though the story is fiction, vintage postcards are still a fun way to explore.
Browse the selection at our eBay store

Mechanical Marvels

As the Harvest Moon wanes and the fall weather arrives, now is the time to cozy up with a few old nursery rhymes. These rare Raphael Tuck & Sons mechanical cards are an enchanting entrance to a magical season.

Published by Raphael Tuck & Sons of London, these elaborate die-cut pop-up cards feature beloved nursery rhymes and fairy tales including Little Bo Peep, Cinderella, Dick Whittington, and Three Little Kittens. Each piece showcases the exceptional craftsmanship and attention to detail that made Tuck one of the most prestigious names in Victorian publishing.

Vintage cards by raphael tuck & sons

Founded in the 1860s by German immigrant Raphael Tuck, the company quickly established itself as a leader in chromolithographic printing. By 1893, they had earned a Royal Warrant, becoming “Art Publishers to Her Majesty the Queen.” This royal endorsement reflected the superior quality of their work, which combined vibrant colors, intricate details, and innovative three-dimensional designs. These mechanical cards, likely produced between the 1880s and 1910s, represent the company at its creative peak.

In an era before mass media entertainment, these colorful, interactive pieces were technological marvels. The chromolithography process allowed for rich, multi-hued images that seemed almost magical to contemporary viewers. Their three-dimensional construction meant they weren’t merely viewed but displayed—transforming mantels into miniature theaters of beloved stories. Collecting and arranging these cards became a popular hobby. Many were preserved in elaborate scrapbooks, but relatively few have survived.

WWI widely disrupted the European paper and printing industries, and Raphael Tuck’s London facilities were destroyed during the WWII Blitz in 1940, losing 74 years of business records and thousands for illustrations and production files. Mid-century greeting card companies did continue to produce mechanical cards, but the more elaborate craft traditions largely faded in favor of modern design trends and less complicated manufacturing.

New technologies have revived the artform and inspired contemporary artists. Robert Sabuda elevated pop-up books and cards to fine art status with his extraordinary paper engineering. Lovepop creates elaborate 3D greeting cards for every occasion. The London company Roger la Borde produces wild and wonderful contemporary designs. Of course, independent artists worldwide create handcrafted die-cut cards that both honor and stretch well-beyond the Raphael Tuck legacy.

To Read More

The History of Raphael Tuck & Sons
https://www.tuckdbpostcards.org/history
Detailed company history from the TuckDB database, the premier online resource for Tuck collectors

Pop-up and Movable Books: In the Context of History
https://popuplady.com/about-pop-ups/pop-up-and-movable-books-in-the-context-of-history/
Excellent illustrated timeline from 13th century volvelles to contemporary artists like Robert Sabuda

Victorian Christmas Cards: An Everyday Work of Art
https://victorianweb.org/technology/letters/christmascards.html
Explores chromolithography technology and the cultural impact of Victorian greeting cards

Raphael Tuck Postcards | The World’s Most Famous Postcards
https://www.britannicauctions.com/blog/raphael-tuck-postcards/
Collector’s guide covering history, famous series, and current market values