Sifting through the stacks this season, in search of levity and brevity.
Oh dear, a trove of kitschy postcard sets has appeared in The Posted Past studio. Careful opening boxes around here. I’ve been sorting and stocking the store this month, getting ready for the holidays.
Most of these vintage finds make thoughtful gifts for nature seekers, travelers, and art lovers. Some make for big belly laughs, too. Quit your job for two minutes and follow me.
Graphic novelist Paul Hornschemeier gives us thirty So-So Heroes, like Amalgamonster and Biggeespeare, in a nicely packaged postcard set. Bound to scare your friends, a little.
This next collection by fine artist and designer Rex Ray feels like a festive fondue party in a retro-future living room. Witty banter, wry smiles, and wood grain. Get your sweater sets.
I am Yours from Seattle-based artist Joe Park comes with a neatly-placed curatorial note from Robin Held and a lovely literary sketch by Jen Graves.
“You have seen these folks before–even if you don’t know where”
The collection does feel like finding a tiny gallery all to yourself, and a weird world of bears and bunnies. Worth the trip!
Stay Tuned by Nathan Fox is a visual romp through the artist’s fantastical funhouse. Eye-frying colors and psyche-stained scenes will make you feel like you woke up on the other side of a paranormal universe.
Anything pre-Y2K is officially vintage now. Not funny, I know. These Golden 50s throwback designs make it even worse. You’ll be thanking your lucky leg-warmers we made it out ok, mostly.
Over the past few weeks, a rare photo postcard album has revealed places, property, and people, along with our own ideas about what we see. We’ve gone from unmarked wilderness, to building structures and social life, to faces and a few names.
We look back at them, and they return the gaze. Their stories blend with our own memories and imagination. They begin to feel like someone’s ancestors, though the particulars remain elusive.
Rochester in Rearview
In 1877, photography required glass plates, wet chemicals, heavy equipment, and specialized knowledge. George Eastman, a frustrated bank clerk from a poor family in Rochester, taught himself the process in his mother’s kitchen.
A decade later, Eastman had invented a simple camera pre-loaded with film for 100 exposures. By 1903, the Eastman Kodak Company released the 3A Folding Pocket Camera with 3¼ × 5½ inch film—exactly postcard size and pre-printed on the reverse. Local photographers and home enthusiasts could contact-print the negative directly onto postcard paper. No enlarger needed, and simplified processing equipment and chemicals.
Rochester became an ecosystem. Bausch & Lomb made the lenses. Kodak manufactured the cameras, bought the film company, and controlled the processing. Customers shipped the entire camera unit back to the factory, and received prints and a pre-loaded camera in return. “You press the button, we do the rest.” Factory workers were the first to witness an era of American life, as images of farms, houses, banks, theatre, and towns and their inhabitants poured in.
A quiet man, Eastman watched this unfold from the center, as his invention changed history and rippled through culture. By 1920, millions of Americans owned cameras. Eastman left a simple note when he ended his own life at 77 and in degenerative pain, “To my friends: My work is done. Why wait? GE”.
What We See
The studio portraits above show painted backdrops—ornamental arches, garden trellises. The lighting is controlled. Poses held steady. Technical quality consistent. These were made by professionals charging by the sitting.
The outdoor snapshots show real places—porches, orchards, dirt roads. Natural lighting, sometimes harsh. Composition varies from confident to awkward. These came from camera owners of varying skill. The irregularities in frame and exposure suggest they were developed at home, too.
What We Don’t See
Despite the pre-printed paper and earnest intent, real photo postcards were rarely sent as such. A few have difficult script, cryptic addresses, faded cancellations, and worn stamps.
“Hello Fanni. Miss Fanni Moore, Panhuska, Okla.”
The remaining relics haven’t been labeled, addressed, or mailed. Most backs are blank, and they were often collected in photo albums. The manufacturing marks may have been quite incidental.
What’s missing from nearly all: names. Very few clues to subjects, locations, dates. The people who made these photographs knew who everyone was. They didn’t need labels. Or, perhaps they were accompanied by letters and mailed in envelopes for privacy and protection.
A century later, the faces remain potent but anonymous. We guess at relationships from physical similarity, from who stands near whom. Sometimes we’re right. Sometimes, we can’t believe our eyes.
Spaces in Between
The 3A Folding Pocket Kodak cost $20-30, equivalent to $600-900 today. An expensive hobby, but accessible to prosperous farmers, small business owners, middle-class families. Film cost about 50 cents per roll.
The investment meant something, whether it was the equipment or the studio session. People photographed what mattered—children, homes, gatherings. The images document their priorities, and their time passing.
Real People, Real Limits
These are real people who lived, worked, loved, died. Someone cared enough to preserve their images. They matter still, in part, because they mattered to someone before.
But our analysis stops here. We can describe what we see—the composition, the technical choices, the historical context. We can note patterns across the collection. We can explain how the technology worked and who had access.
The work of naming and placing, in particular, belongs to families searching their own histories, connecting faces to stories passed down, matching photographs to genealogical records. Those searches have their own purposes, their own meanings.
We are collectors examining patterns, not descendants reclaiming ancestors. Though, it is tempting.
Tricky, sticky stories arise at the sight of buildings in the landscape. Evidence (or absence) of us along the way.
As landscapes, last week’s real photo postcards (RPPC) asked for nothing. Trees, frozen roads, animals burrowing in snow—they floated free of context. We could easily appreciate them without knowing where they might be.
Buildings are different. A structure says someone decided, planned, risked, and accomplished. They hauled materials, drove nails, painted trim. Buildings demand explanation in ways that hills might easily demure.
Reading postcards slowly reveals patterns. The undivided back means pre-1907. The real photo process suggests a local photographer, or maybe an itinerant professional documenting a place too remote to the reach of commercial postcard companies. Paper stock, indicia, stamps and cancellation, faded handwriting and previous labeling, even image placement and crop—these technical details narrow the place possibilities.
But they don’t yet answer another question: Who are Robert and Paul?
Tell Robert the dog lying down is mine and the one standing up is Paul dog
What We Might Know
A two-story house with a generous porch is carefully centered in one photograph. Mature trees in the foreground. Curtains hang in the windows. Someone lived here and wanted to show their pride. Or, was it for sale?
The architectural details offer more clues. Clapboard siding, stone or brick foundation, decorative porch elements—not fancy, but intentional. It seems to be in a neighborhood with sidewalks. In an era between 1900-1920, somewhere in the Midwest or West judging by lot size. Also, a fire hydrant.
The windmill in another image dates itself. Windmills were an important utility and industry, and that style had a particular era. The house beneath it—elaborate Queen Anne with corner turret, ornamental shingles, and ornate columns—speaks to aspiration. Someone had big plans. This is visible evidence. When and where becomes roughly recognizable.
But, the people who stood on that porch remain absent and enigmatic. Who were they? What is happening here? A creative tension is mounting between the realm of evidence and the pull of story.
Sensing Stories
Two women stand in front of McMann Boarding House wearing identical striped dresses. The building is simple—board and batten, minimal trim, the kind of structure that goes up first and fast in a growing place.
The photograph has a vertical tear, the exposure is bad, and time has degraded it. But the sign remains legible: McMann Boarding House. Finally, a name.
Who was McMann? Who are these women? Employees? Vacationers? The photo is both casual and deliberately staged. What might the matching dresses mean? Pride? Subjugation?
Reading their faces, we fill in the narrative, almost immediately and sometimes inescapably. Relationships, motivations, futures take shape unbidden. This is exactly what we both invited and warned of last week—making it up. Always dangerous, sometimes worthwhile.
The impulse to story is nearly irresistible. A name on a building. Two women in matching dresses. The space around the postcard lights up. Are these their stories, or our own, or a magical projection that folds time?
When the Past Chats Back
Shuffling the stack, several cards in this collection start speaking to one another. Same photographic quality. Same paper stock. Similar landscape—flat, spare, newly broken. And most telling: similar structures in states of becoming.
Laid out together, the pattern emerges. Houses with stone foundations and wraparound porches. An elaborate Queen Anne with a windmill. McMann Boarding House with its two women in matching stripes. A lunch room with an immaculately vernacular grand porch. Best-dressed proprietors standing proud. A girl and her horse, bare buildings behind her. A picnic under the canopy of a large tree.
Also, a massive plume of black smoke billowing skyward, an oil derrick to the left, eight or nine men grinning toward the camera. The photograph stops everything cold. They struck liquid gold. A triumph worth documenting. Fine lines of the plumes etching through the darkest black.
These eleven images are a cluster from the same story—a town emerging around oil. Homesteaders and entrepreneurs arriving in a place that may have been open prairie five years earlier. Building homes, businesses, infrastructure for both industrial productivity and social life. Documenting the process with real photo postcards, for themselves or to send East. Their message: we have arrived safely and are in luck.
From Here to Now
This is a founding, the moment a place began and the stakes changed. These aren’t isolated buildings anymore and oddly they seem less like photos, too. We know there is a community taking shape and the evidentiary questions multiply. Who were they, by name? What brought them here? Did this place survive or vanish?
And harder, deeper, more consequential questions: Who lived here before? What animals and habitats were displaced? What did the derricks do? For them, and also to us.
Boom town logic. Extraction economy. Infrastructure dependencies and family injuries inherited. Cultural degradation, and environmental costs still being paid. This isn’t quaint history. This is the beginning of something we’re grappling with today.
Suddenly our imaginative stories contract and we now seek facts. The boarding house proprietor’s daily life can be imagined, but not separated from a place built on oil speculation. The architectural ambition of that Queen Anne deserves appreciation, but it went up in a town that might have lasted ten years or a hundred, depending on the wells. The buildings aren’t innocent, and we are implicated.
More in Store
Another stack of postcards might be related to this cluster—similar age, similar style, possibly the same region, likely at later dates. And then a few unrelated ones, probably European based on the architecture.
Not every fragment connects or resolves. Some buildings will remain singular, their stories unrecoverable. Churches and homes, beautiful structures, carefully photographed. Loved locally today as a memory or a ruin, perhaps.
Not everything needs a narrative. Some images can just be enigmatic. Evidence of care, of craftsmanship, of a moment someone thought worth preserving. These evocative details lead to fiction, which makes its own case for history and the preservation of minute detail.
But this cluster won’t let go. They connect to another stack, and soon we’ll know more. Next week we’ll meet the people themselves, looking back at us.
Did you know? October 1 is World Postcard Day! The celebration started in 2019, based on the grand old global pastime of simply staying in touch.
World Postcard Day was designated by Postcrossing as the first of October starting in 2019, including a new postcard design each year. We share a simple mission to keep postcards circulating, and their way of doing it is elegant and efficient. A wonderful illustrated history of the postcard is available to enjoy, as well. To celebrate the day, I’ll be requesting my first address and then happily duty-bound to get a postcard in the mail quickly. Maybe you will, too!
Featured Postcard~ MatToon Memories
Another mention of Mattoon, Illinois. This time, it is 1912, with a typical friendly update, winter weather commiserations, and gifts exchanged.
Dear Carrie, How is this for winter? I’m good and tired of it. Tell the folks I got a basket last Wed that tickled me mightily. Tell Stella, I will redeem my promise this week if this weather continues. I’ll look them up this P.M. & send at once. I’ve been too busy to do anything extra. Hope U are better. I weigh 154 and you will have to hurry or I’ll be way ahead of U. Mayme, March 11.
Front of the card: A delicate bouquet bursts from a pink gathered vase. Pink hyacinths and white lily of the valley dominate the arrangement. The flowers cascade naturally, their stems tied with fabric and matching bow. The text “A Note to you” appears in a blue decorative font at bottom right. Embossed rosettes frame the card in an ornate lace-like border.
Back details: Handwritten script fills the left side. A one-cent green Benjamin Franklin stamp sits in the upper right corner. The postmark reads “Mattoon, IL” with partial date visible, March 11, 1912, and a flag cancellation. The address shows “Mrs. Carrie Fulmer, St. Mary’s, Ind.”
Condition: The card shows minimal wear—crisp embossing, slight foxing, faded cancellation marks, minor corner softening. Colors remain vibrant. No tears or creases mar either side, though there is a minor cancellation mark on the front upper right. Very good condition for its age.
Rarity: This embossed, die-cut postcard represents German lithography’s golden age. Publishers used chromolithography to achieve the rich colors. The deep embossing required specialized presses. Early 1900s embossed postcards survive in quantity, but this example’s condition elevates its value. The Mattoon, IL postmark and readable message add historical context. Not museum-rare, but better than average.
Appeal: Collectors of Victorian and Edwardian ephemera may treasure this piece. Design enthusiasts might enjoy the embossed example. Genealogists ought to enjoy our meanderings through Mattoon and Mayme and Carrie’s perspectives. Botanical art lovers appreciate the detailed floral illustration and coded meanings. Stamp collectors note the Franklin one-cent issue and period-specific cancellations. Vintage greeting card dealers would display this prominently.
Would anyone cut it up to make an art card? Oh, the creative tension between past and future!
If you are nearby, come visit our very first postcard display at Tempe Yarn & Fiber. Grateful for the chance to get them out in the world. New designs and online sales coming soon!
Our very first art card online gallery show in September 2025, featuring the liminal landscapes of Larry L’Ecuyer.
This watercolor postcard depicts a tranquil lakeside landscape rendered in soft, muted tones. The composition is divided into three distinct layers: the foreground features delicate tall grasses and reeds painted in warm golden and green hues that sway gently along the water’s edge. The middle ground shows a calm, reflective lake rendered in pale blue and gray washes that mirror the sky above. The background reveals a range of mountains painted in subtle purple and blue tones that fade into the misty distance.
Larry L’Ecuyer, the artist, has used the watercolor medium’s natural transparency to create atmospheric depth, with colors bleeding gently into one another. The overall mood is peaceful and contemplative, capturing the quiet beauty of a lakeside morning or evening.
Flip the card over and a quiet story unfolds. An adult son’s note to his mother in anticipation of a cool summer getaway.
Landscapes, by Larry L’Ecuyer
As I curated this show of my brother’s painted postcards, I found three facts about the artist that help to put this small selection of his work in context. One, Larry loves long distance bike rides. Two, he has always doodled. Three, sometimes he paints when he can’t sleep.
I suspect watercolor landscapes are a welcome choice for an outdoorsman. Beauty on the road whizzes by at miles per hour. Fish moving below the surface are mesmerizing in the moment. A chance to reflect comes later, with enough time to figure out light, color, and form in that same solo flow he finds on a bike or in a kayak.
Both the humor and graphic techniques of doodling show up in Larry’s houses, trees, and cacti, which almost always hint at a face, gesture, or mood. On the back, his notes to our parents include the puns and word play that are part of our family culture.
Larry’s art cards started arriving in Dad’s mailbox when discomfort and displacement were real worries for our elderly father. These painted palettes delivered smiles instead. We have learned a thousand times again that life’s difficulties (including insomnia) must be met with simple joys. He sends cards to Mom, too, and who knows all the other mailboxes he graces.
Larry’s cards are painted, mailed, and delivered to individual people, and they ripple out in countless ways. This Posted Past show is inspired by the reminder: Art has a sneaky way of getting right to you.
Here we go! The Posted Past heads into the fall season with rare cards, a new gallery, and a social mission to trade loneliness for connection.
featured postcard~ rare novelty card still holds a mystery
An early 20th century novelty postcard featuring humorous photography and personal correspondence from Missouri.
Front of the card: The photograph shows a young Black man in white shirt, suspenders, and dark trousers, grinning while holding a large broken umbrella overhead in a playful pose. Below reads the humorous caption “A little disfigured, but still in the ring”—typical novelty humor from the postcard craze era. A black border frames the photograph on cream cardstock.
Back details: The reverse bears “Carbon Photo Series No. 513” identifying the commercial publisher’s series. Addressed to Miss Grace Skillman in Pleasant Hill, Missouri, with a green 1-cent Franklin stamp and clear 1908 postmark. The handwritten message describes an exhausting early morning wait in Lee’s Summit for “Brother and Frank,” and promising a longer letter that evening.
“Still in L.S. haven’t slept but about ten minutes. My eyes looks like two burnt holes in a blanket. Brother and Frank hasn’t come yet. I will wait till 7.30 and then go home. Will write tonight. Just finished my breakfast. I will eat if not sleep. I got here ten till five.
Condition and Appeal: The sepia-toned image displays characteristic early photography with some age spots, and a nicked corner. The image and reverse side remain in good condition with clear photography and legible handwriting. The “Carbon Photo Series” indicates premium production using carbon-based printing methods prized for superior image quality and archival stability. Grace Andre Skillman was born in Pleasant Hill in 1889, making her nineteen when she received this card. The message and the lack of formal salutation and signature suggest this is casual ongoing family correspondence. As a result, the author of the postcard remains a mystery.
Vintage novelty postcards are increasingly collectible, especially numbered commercial series with documented recipients. Collectors of African-Americana may find the image appealing and relatively rare. The combination of carbon printing technology, humorous subject matter, and personal correspondence is of interest to collectors of vintage photography, postcard enthusiasts, genealogy researchers, and those focused on early 20th century American social history and communication.
Introducing~ The Posted Past Art Card Gallery
A selection of Larry L’Ecuyer’s watercolor landscapes are on display in our Online Art Card Gallery. Fitting as our first show. Enjoy!
Countdown to a Lakeside Getaway, 2025, Larry L’Ecuyer, watercolor on postcard
NEWS & UPDATES~ art card call for submissions is open
The World’s Smallest Artist Retreat (our P.O. Box) is awaiting your art card submission. Follow one rule to join the next open show. Details here!
Art card kits now in stock
Our Art Card Kits are perfectly-packaged as a fun, creative activity for you and a friend to complete in as little as an hour or made into a lovely afternoon.
The kit includes two postcard blanks, six vintage finds curated to the chosen theme, and a bundle of collage goodies for your whimsy. There is a free gift inside, too!
Once you’re done, surprise someone with an original art card in their mailbox. Or, send it back to us to include in the next online show. Either way, you’ll have cultivated a little joy in your garden.
Sweet readers, this is your pre-preview of something very fresh, and a long time coming…
Hold a vintage postcard in your hand and flip it front to back.
On the front, usually an idealized world. Sun-drenched beaches, pristine mountain vistas, city streets captured at their most photogenic moments. Designed to say, “Wish you were here!”
Flip it over, and you find something entirely different. The back reveals the personal, the quixotic, sometimes the magically mundane.
“Weather awful, hotel terrible, a bit bothered by a smelly seatmate on the plane, but having a wonderful time anyway.”
Postcards fascinate me precisely because they embody all of life. They’re both public and personal, both idealized and achingly real. They bring the past forward in time, making unexpected connections with family, friends, and special places—revealing who we have been along the way.
On a very old postcard, the handwriting of someone long gone comes alive again right before our eyes. A jotted note gives us a new view into their private world. Their words leap over the decades to reach us. There is a lush creative commons between now and then, a liminal green lawn to lounge on and take in the cool air.
I have lived happily in those in-between spaces for the last few years. Somewhere in the middle of my life and career and enjoying myself in the meantime. Not where I was before, and both curious and terrified about what comes next.
Well friends, like the best summer novel, the plot thickens.
Starting in September, The Posted Past officially launches a new phase as a social enterprise, inspired by the simple truth that we can trade loneliness for connection, one postcard at a time.
We have already done it, friends!
As one of my earliest subscribers, you have enjoyed (I hope!) an essay every Wednesday for the last year. Going forward, you’ll still get those delightful diversions that remind us we are more than we knew. I’ll also offer sneak peeks at rare postcard finds, each one a small treasure with its own story to tell.
Old or new, postcards have a job to do.
Along the way, I have fallen in love with making and receiving Art Cards. My brother started mailing the lovely landscape watercolors he does when insomnia strikes. A collage free-for-all at the local gallery had me re-inspired by the ‘ransom note’ style I used to do as a teenager. Blink-blink… I found myself dreaming up fabulous cards to make.
Art cards celebrate the artist in all of us. I particularly love collage and watercolor, but truly an art card can be made with scraps. Sometimes the most satisfying work comes from simple gestures, too. Slow down enough to make something with your hands, and then send it away to make someone’s day.
Coming this fall, The Posted Past will feature an online gallery where you can browse through handmade artwork that has traveled across time and space, carrying all the marks of love, adventure, and everyday life. Call for submissions now open, mail your art card to: The Posted Past, P.O. Box 24431, Tempe, AZ 85285.
Abundance can be overwhelming, and it’s not always easy. Right now, I feel both confident and queasy. But, I’m not alone. Here’s how you can help.
Become a paid subscriber—hit the button below to support the effort
Pre-order an Art Card Collage Kit (coming soon!) for your own creative fun
Make an art card and send it to us—be first in the online gallery show!
Though we revel in real life, the handmade, and the historic, The Posted Past is also meant to be super social. Excuse our dust, and help us get started!
Browse the collection of vintage postcards on eBay and follow the store
Both/and. Past and future. Solitude and connection. Cardboard curiosities and some larger-than-life dreams. Thank you for being here together. Keep an eye on your inbox and mailbox—September is full of surprises!
A vibrant Buff-Bellied Hummingbird hovering near a red tubular flower, showcasing its iridescent green head and back, rusty-orange belly, and needle-like bill in a classic feeding pose.
Detailed illustration of a Ferruginous Hawk perched on a branch, displaying its characteristic rusty-brown and white plumage with distinctive feathered legs and robust build typical of North America’s largest hawk.
Depicts a Gray Jay (now called Canada Jay) perched on a snow-dusted branch with small green lichens, showing its fluffy gray and white plumage, black cap, and compact songbird form.
A pair of Pine Warblers on coniferous branches, displaying their olive-yellow plumage with white wing bars and the subtle dimorphism between the brighter male and more subdued female.
A Cattle Egret in breeding plumage with golden-buff crest and back feathers, bright orange-red bill and legs, posed in the elegant stance typical of these large birds.
A set of five Reader’s Digest Association postcards from their Book of North American Birds series. High-quality illustrations and professional production from the 1970s-1980s era of educational materials. Particularly appealing to birders and natural history enthusiasts. Good condition, unposted with no marks. See photos for actual condition. Vintage items – writing, stains, color changes, and wear are part of charm and provenance.
[Note: Summer focus is on detailed captions. Essays return in September!]
The news these days deserves a long silent stare. Here is one from a horse. A century or more later… still no.
[Note: Summer focus is on detailed captions. New essays return in September!]
A vintage real photo postcard shows a dappled gray horse standing in a farmyard setting. The well-built animal is wearing a halter and is positioned in profile to show its conformation. A person in a hat and dark clothing stands beside the horse, likely the owner or handler. The American rural backdrop includes wooden farm buildings and bare winter trees. The ground is packed earth typical of a working farm. The photograph has the characteristic appearance of an early 20th century image, with some evidence of a stylized border in the exposure. The postcard is in excellent condition front and back, unposted with no writing, and an AZO indicia dating the item between 1904 and 1918. The subject matter and production method suggest this is a unique image and object, with no known duplicate.
The Posted Past 