commercial art – The Posted Past

History’s Holdings

Holding onto history takes at least two of us.

Each of us hangs onto the bits and pieces of our own stories, and sometimes we write them down or snap a photo. Memories we share between family and friends get saved on phones, tucked away in drawers, and tossed into boxes. Shuffling through old memories is a way to stay in touch with ourselves, our people, and our past from time to time. On my loneliest days, sitting amidst these postcards, I have everywhere to turn.

The family collection is well into the six digits in terms of volume and value. Neatly ordered albums, they are sometimes curated by geography or theme. A few also left untidy, just as one should never leave a page blank at night.

Once, I asked Dad why he collected them.

“For you,” he said.

I’m certain he meant us.

A postcard of a building that has been torn down is worth more than one of a building that still stands. I like that logic. The building is gone. The card remains. Suddenly it is not a souvenir. It becomes a rare record, and a potent place to put other remembrances.

Who is responsible for these palettes of history? Museums, libraries, archives. Institutions, we tend to think. They are built for it, with catalogued and climate-controlled cases. Open to registered researchers on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

But history first accumulates in attics, basements, and estate sales. Boxes get donated, dispersed, sold, or simply lost. Private collectors have always been a first line of preservation. They stalk the sales looking for bargains, and more.

Dad was one, and he made this collection a life’s work far beyond his profession. Turns out, I have to follow these clues, too. Probably genetic.

New this month, our fresh retro designs are for sale at Hackett House in downtown Tempe. Built in 1888, the oldest fired brick building in Tempe, it’s now the home of an Arizona-themed gift shop. Hackett House also serves as headquarters for Tempe Sister Cities, a group dedicated to shrinking the distance between people across the world. Postcards have always been in that business. Read more about Tempe’s postcard history at Tempe in Time.

Another big shift is coming this summer. The Posted Past is moving our image collection database in-house. What began as an experimental eBay site is turning into curated collections of rare postcards presented with provenance. My essays give the cards historical and cultural context. You, lovely readers, renew them with memory and meaning. Thank you!

Every Wednesday, I publish an essay about a rare postcard or set. Most have been a brief but detailed description of the postcards as objects, along with anything I might surmise from the evidence or lack of it.

Now with some trusted AI support, I am able to catalogue and query those images at a technical level never before possible. As suspected, the new capacities make me work harder as a writer and researcher, and greatly motivate my interests. Also, the image metadata extends The Posted Past’s reach, especially the alt text.

It’s an expanded aim as I stay on mission to trade loneliness for connection, and find the right places to put the history we hold.

Sepia RPPC of military and civilian dignitaries gathered on a train platform between two carriages, with a row of soldiers in dress uniform standing at attention at right. Antwerp, 1920 Summer Olympics. — Dignitaries and honor guard at an Antwerp train station, 1920 Summer Olympics.

FROM THE RARITIES ROOM

Precipice of Peace: Postcards from the 1920 Antwerp Olympics
Eighteen RPPCs from a Games held in a city still clearing rubble from the First World War. Athletes from a world trying to remember what peace felt like.

Healing Ward
A matched pair of British WWI RPPCs showing a military hospital ward at Christmas, circa 1915–1918. Paired cards from this period are uncommon. Someone kept them together for more than a century.

Susanna’s Suitors
Fröken Susanna Pettersson of Sunnansjö, Sweden received romantic postcards in 1903. She kept them. We have them. Her name, her village, her suitors — all of it intact. Personal provenance.

Shakespearean Soap
In the 1880s, someone decided Shakespeare had the perfect verse for selling soap. The Dobbins’ Electric Soap Shakespeare set is a named Victorian trade card series with documented manufacturer and known print run. Material culture, advertising history, and print history, all in one small set.

Trade Card Tricks
Three cards slipped into a box of laundry powder in 1882. The Victorian collecting impulse worked then, and it still does. This essay traces what those three cards reveal about the era that produced them.

The Last Summer
A Hoenisch photogravure portrait of composer Edvard Grieg at Troldhaugen, dated July 25, 1907. Six weeks after this photograph was made, Grieg was gone. The card is a named subject, a documented location, a specific date. Where should it stay forever?

RMS Berengaria
The story of a mail-carrying ship named after a queen who never arrived. This postcard sits at the intersection of maritime history, social history, and the mechanics of moving correspondence across an ocean.

Lens on Coblenz, 1918
A Swedish-German photography team documented America’s occupation of Coblenz after World War I. The RPPCs are rare on their own terms. The photographers — a married couple — makes this story come alive.

Coblenz Continued
After the first Coblenz essay published, research revealed more. The trove is larger and the record of the postwar occupation continues to grow.

RMS Berengaria

The story of a mail-carrying ship named after a queen who never arrived.

RARE CARD

Art Deco promotional postcard, printed in U.S.A., circa 1923

Front: A bold Art Deco illustration in four colors: burnt amber, deep navy, black, and red-orange. The ship Berengaria fills the frame. The black hull dominates the lower half. Three banded funnels plume smoky blue-purple into the amber sky. The ship’s name is lettered in copper on the hull. The Cunard lion sits in a red medallion at upper left. At lower left, a stylized New York skyline recedes into amber, a bridge suggested behind it. The waves are geometric. The image mirrors a popular poster style, compressed into an elongated postcard.

Reverse: The left panel carries a printed ship description: 919 feet, 52,022 gross tons, Pompeian swimming pool, gymnasium, Turkish and electric baths, special ballroom. Divided format, publisher code A. & P. 47850, printed in the U.S.A. The address side is blank. The card was never sent.

“The R.M.S. Berengaria, the largest ship in the Cunard fleet and one of the three largest ships in the world, has a length of 919 feet, and a tonnage of 52,022 gross tons. Her passenger accommodation includes a Pompeian swimming pool, gymnasium, Turkish and electric baths, and a special ballroom.”

Production: Cunard distributed promotional postcards like this one aboard ship and at its offices. This example uses offset lithography with a guilloche-style mechanical tint screen giving it the graphic quality of a travel poster. The colors are rich and regal. The card shows its age: deep crease lines, foxing, staining, with a bent lower left corner.

Collectibility: Ship postcards from the great transatlantic liners are a well-established collecting category. The Berengaria appears frequently. This example stands out for its Art Deco illustrative style over the more common photographic format. The design quality is high, but condition limits its value.

Back of RMS Berengaria Cunard Line promotional postcard, circa 1921–1938. Divided back format, printed in U.S.A., publisher A. & P. 47850. Left panel carries printed ship description: 919 feet, 52,022 gross tons, Pompeian swimming pool, gymnasium, Turkish and electric baths, special ballroom. Address side blank. Unposted. — RMS Berengaria, Cunard Line postcard — reverse. Publisher A. & P. no. 47850, printed in U.S.A.

Samuel Cunard began his shipping empire on a government mail contract in 1839. As a Royal Mail Ship, the RMS prefix was baked into Cunard’s identity from the start. It meant a contractual obligation to carry post, and to sail on schedule whether the ship was full or nearly empty. Cunard told his captains: “Ship, passengers and mail — bring them safely over, and safely back.”

The ship’s name came from a medieval English queen. Berengaria of Navarre married Richard the Lionheart in Cyprus during a Crusade, was widowed without an heir, and spent her remaining decades in Le Mans petitioning by letter for the pension King John refused to pay. She appealed to popes and argued with bishops. Her entire widowhood was conducted through correspondence, written from afar, addressed to courts that largely ignored her. She is most remembered as the English queen who never set foot in England.

The ship started out as the SS Imperator, built in Hamburg for the Hamburg America Line and launched in 1912 as the largest passenger ship in the world. The war intervened and the ship was seized as a reparation and sailed briefly as a U.S. Navy transport. In 1921, it was renamed Berengaria and handed to Cunard. Much like its namesake, the ship never returned to its homeland.

The Berengaria served as Cunard’s flagship through the 1920s, then declined into Prohibition-dodging cruises that passengers nicknamed Bargainaria. Aging wiring sparked electrical fires. Cunard retired the vessel in 1938.

Sir John Jarvis, a Surrey MP, bought Berengaria for scrap and sent her to the River Tyne in a deliberate act of charity. Jarrow had lost its main shipyard, Palmer’s, in 1934. Unemployment topped 70 percent. Two years before the Berengaria arrived, 200 of Jarrow’s men had marched 300 miles to London to petition Parliament for work. Parliament offered nothing. Jarvis purchased the Berengaria and the Olympic to give the town’s idle shipyard workers something to dismantle. Men who had built destroyers and passenger liners cut the ship apart with blowtorches. The work was interrupted by the Second World War, but the last of the ship was gone in 1946.

To Read More

From Here to There

Sometime in the 1980s, a family on North Magnolia in Santee, California, received an oil change reminder in the mail. Postwar housing tracts had filled in the San Diego suburb and a car was not optional. As much as new hot rods were in style, it was a nostalgic moment for vintage automobiles.

The card from John Horsman’s Chevron station showed a 1908 Benz. Drew Ford in La Mesa sent another with a 1911 Coey Flyer. On the back: a service reminder. Your oil is due. Come in soon.

Vintage dealer trade postcard front, 1911 Coey Flyer antique automobile, natural color postcard by Dexter Press — 1911 Coey Flyer

The cards arrived with calculated regularity. Each addressed to the same house, each featuring a different antique automobile on the front. Curated from private collections and museums, these postcards were reproduced by the millions as stock advertising for companies across the country. Depicting automobiles from a bygone era, the trade cards themselves were designed to be collectible.

Vintage dealer trade postcard, antique automobile at Pikes Peak Ghost Town Colorado Springs, featuring 1903 Cadillac, 1908 Maxwell and 1904 Zimmerman — 1903 Cadillac, 1908 Maxwell, 1904 Zimmerman

Vintage dealer trade postcard front, 1926 Franklin Boattail Roadster Model 11-A antique automobile, owned by Ed Midura Chicopee Falls Massachusetts — 1903 Cadillac, 1908 Maxwell, 1904 Zimmerman

The man most responsible for preserving those automobiles was born in Venice, California, in 1911. Bill Harrah opened a bingo parlor there as a young man, moved to Reno in 1937, and built a casino empire that made him one of the wealthiest men in Nevada. He was meticulous about his clothes, his restaurants, and especially his cars.

His first collector car was a 1911 Maxwell, and Harrah bought, restored, and accumulated automobiles for the rest of his life. He acquired Winthrop Rockefeller’s extensive collection for $947,000, including 68 motorized vehicles and three horse-drawn carriages in a single transaction. It was a passion he pursued, and almost couldn’t contain.

By 1962, Harrah rented a huge brick building in Sparks to display around 150 cars. The cars moved in convoys. His mechanics restored them to running condition. When the restorations were finished, they test-drove the vehicles up and down Glendale Boulevard in Sparks, sometimes dressed in the clothing of the era.

The Harrah’s postcards in this set were produced from his collection’s photographs, shot when the restoration program was at its height. A glass company in Detroit printed them. An auto glass distributor in Phoenix mailed them to customers in the state. Though lovingly housed in Sparks, this 1913 Garford traveled through the postal system to Prescott, Arizona, tucked into a stack of bills and circulars.

The collection eventually spread across thirteen warehouses. His executive Lloyd Dyer put it plainly, “We owned thirteen hundred automobiles at that time. Bill wanted to have a perfect museum to show his cars.”

Harrah never finished that museum. He died in 1978. Holiday Inn purchased his hotels, casinos, and automobile collection in 1980 and announced plans to sell everything. Harrah friends and fans pushed back hard. Holiday Inn agreed to donate 175 cars if money could be raised for a museum.

The National Automobile Museum opened in downtown Reno on November 5, 1989, and is still operating with more than 225 cars on display. That gift became the largest corporate philanthropic donation in the nation’s history at the time.

Vintage advertising postcard front, 1903 Thomas Tonneau automobile, photographed at Harrah's Automobile Collection, Reno, Nevada — 1903 Thomas Tonneau

Vintage trade postcard front, 1933 Franklin Custom Pirate Phaeton second view, Harrah's Automobile Collection Reno Nevada — 1903 Thomas Tonneau

In a small Michigan town called Hickory Corners, another collector built a museum for different reasons. Donald S. Gilmore ran the Upjohn Company, the pharmaceutical firm his family had founded in Kalamazoo in 1886. As the story goes, one day his wife told him he needed a hobby. Most people know what that means.

She gave him his first project car in 1963 as a retirement gift, a 1920 Pierce-Arrow. Within three years he had accumulated 37 cars, a steamboat, a steam tractor, and a biplane.

Eventually, he bought a farm up the road and the Gilmore Car Museum opened to the public on July 31, 1966, with 35 cars on display. That farm now covers 90 acres. The museum exhibits over 400 vehicles and motorcycles from all eras in several vintage buildings. A staggering scale for an effort that began because a his wife wanted him out of the house.

Then there’s Burton H. Upjohn, whose name appears on the backs of multiple cards in this collection. From a different branch of the same Kalamazoo family, he collected cars of his own. In the cards we see here, he loaned the 1908 Packard, 1911 Empire Racy Roadster, and the 1931 Ford Model A to Henry Clark for photography.

Henry Austin Clark Jr. started buying cars at Harvard in the late 1930s. After naval service during World War II, he and family settled in Southampton, New York, into a life of collecting, rallies and tours. The cars outgrew his sheds. He opened the Long Island Automotive Museum in 1948, in large part to house his collection.

He also photographed nearly every notable collector car in America. That’s not quite an exaggeration. Clark comprehensively and precisely documented a vanishing world with attention to what would matter later. He co-authored the Standard Catalog of American Cars with Beverly Rae Kimes. He participated in Glidden Tours for decades. He served as vice president of the Bridgehampton race circuit. He rescued the Thomas Flyer that won the 1908 New York-to-Paris race from a junkyard.

By the late 1970s, the museum’s operating losses forced him to begin selling. In 1979, over two hundred automobiles were auctioned. A year later, the museum closed. Clark died on December 15, 1991, the day after his collection of automotive history began to move to the Benson Ford Research Center at The Henry Ford in Dearborn.

Vintage museum postcard front, 1966 Duesenberg Sedan Model D prototype 8-cylinder body by Ghia, Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum, photography by Nicky Wright — 1966 Duesenberg Sedan (Prototype)

Vintage museum postcard front, 1937 Cord Beverly Sedan Model 812 8-cylinder front drive, Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum, photography by Nicky Wright — 1966 Duesenberg Sedan (Prototype)

The Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum opened in 1974 after community leaders and volunteers spent years raising funds to restore the company’s old showroom and factory in Auburn, Indiana. The National Park Service designated it a National Historic Landmark in 2005. It holds the cars photographed by Nicky Wright for the 1991 postcard set in this collection.

A network of institutions now hold what these private collectors assembled, including the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles, The Henry Ford in Dearborn, the Revs Institute in Naples, the Gilmore in Hickory Corners, and the LeMay in Tacoma.

We can see in this collection where the credit lines overlap. These men likely knew each other, and certainly inhabited a postwar American world of inherited wealth, mechanical passion, and enough acreage to store what they acquired. Though the original collectors have passed, the images, trade cards, archives, museums, and the cars themselves are evidence of an American pastime that lives on today.

To Read More

National Automobile Museum (The Harrah Collection), Reno, Nevada — automuseum.org

Gilmore Car Museum, Hickory Corners, Michigan — gilmorecarmuseum.org

Auburn Cord Duesenberg Automobile Museum, Auburn, Indiana — automobilemuseum.org

Henry Austin Clark Jr. Photograph Collection, The Henry Ford — thehenryford.org

“The Pioneers of Automobile Collecting,” Seal Cove Auto Museum — sealcoveautomuseum.org

Henry Austin Clark, Society of Automotive Historians — autohistory.org

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!

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

For the Birds

A little bird told me it was time to write…

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!]

Buy this Postcard!

Post Forward

Postcards were the social media memes of their day, and they still have a job to do. Love en route from here to you.

Do you remember the last time joy came out of your mailbox?

Not the awaited package on your door step or the snazzy digital greeting card that arrived on your phone.

Was it recently (or long ago) that you picked up your mail, sorted, opened, and then laughed out loud, the glow of love encircling you?

In the second year of Posted Past… sunny sentiments on the sly 🙂

Navarro in the Lava Field

In February 1943, a photographer enigmatically known only as ‘Navarro’ documented Parícutin’s volcanic destruction of a Michoacán village and church, creating powerful postcards that circulated worldwide at the time and are highly collectible now. Then, Navarro vanished from history.

Parícutin erupted from Dionisio Pulido’s cornfield on February 20, 1943, becoming the first comprehensively documented volcanic birth in human history.

The response was immediate and international. Despite World War II, the Parícutin volcanic plumes commanded global coverage. The geological disruptions of fire and lava inspired scientific awe. Life Magazine dispatched photographers. Newsreels carried footage worldwide. Airlines altered flight paths for passenger viewing. By 1947, Hollywood used the still-active volcano as backdrop for the movie Captain from Castile, employing thousands of locals as extras.

In the extensive archives documenting Parícutin volcano’s nine-year life cycle, one name appears and vanishes: Navarro. His postcard images capture the most significant moment in the volcano’s terrifying story—when lava reached the 400-year-old church of San Juan Parangaricutiro. Despite meticulous record-keeping around this geological event, Navarro himself remains a mystery.

His photographs have more than survived. When story of the events at Parícutin are retold, one always finds a Navarro image. The photographer does appear in one other place: Folder 7 in Box 9 of the William F. Foshag archives.

The Day Lava Reached the Church

Navarro’s postcards document a sequence unfolding over a few crucial days in early 1943. For the year prior, the Purépecha community of San Juan Parangaricutiro had watched lava flows advance on their small village while praying their homes, farms, and colonial church would be spared.

Despite their pleas and processions, the lava flow had accelerated beyond divine intervention. President Lázaro Cárdenas and local priests convinced most residents to evacuate, carrying sacred objects and any moveable materials to the nearby town of Uruapan. One rare slice of film shows men removing clay tiles from a building roof.

When the lava reached the church, Navarro was there to document the destruction. Black lava creeping around the church’s perimeter. Intense heat causing wooden elements to combust. Steady accumulation of cooled volcanic rock against the baroque stone façade, contrasting human craftsmanship with geological force.

Two striking images captures the church’s wooden elements on fire—ornate arched stonework and columns holding the structure up while everything else is consumed. Extending the mystery further, these two images bear exactly the same mark and style of the others, but a different name is entirely obscured. Perhaps it makes sense, Navarro and another photographer would go together. Better than alone.

Foshag and the Official Record

William Frederick Foshag of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum led Parícutin’s scientific research and systematic documentation. A respected mineralogist and curator, Foshag had already spent his career studying volcanic minerals and processes. When Parícutin erupted, he was uniquely positioned to lead the most comprehensive study of a volcano’s complete life cycle.

Foshag arrived within weeks of the initial eruption and remained involved until the volcano’s dormancy in 1952. Working with Mexican geologist Dr. Jenaro González Reyna, he established a research station documenting every phase of development. Their collaboration produced detailed maps, temperature measurements, chemical analyses, and thousands of photographs fundamental to volcanic research today.

Navarro’s church sequence suggests either remarkable intuition, access to local knowledge, or information coming from scientific observers. The Purépecha community, drawing on generations of volcanic experience, provided crucial insights about timing and the landscape. Navarro’s ability to be there for the church’s final moments indicates he was plugged in.

Foshag’s archives reveal an extensive network of colleagues contributing to this documentation. Box 9, Folder 7 bears Navarro’s name alongside numerous other photographers, artists, and local and international contacts. It seems Foshag recognized the value of different perspectives in creating a complete record.

The official scientific documentation benefited from all the independent photography produced at the time. Their paths very likely crossed with many others at work during critical days when the lava and ash threatened San Juan Parangaricutiro.

Kodak in Mexico

The real photo postcard industry supporting photographers like Navarro was sophisticated. Entrepreneurs traveled with complete darkroom setups in automobiles, developing film and producing finished postcards within hours. They sold to tourists, sent copies to newspapers, and maintained distribution networks across Mexico and the United States.

By 1943, Kodak had established a robust business providing both cameras and materials throughout Mexico. Navarro’s postcards bear the EKC (Eastman Kodak Company) indicia and are marked Kodak Mexicana, LTD. Navarro had access to standardized, high-quality photographic paper specifically designed for postcard production. This infrastructure allowed photographers to work with consistent materials as they traveled to remote locations.

This commercial system created a parallel archive to official scientific record, prioritizing dramatic visual impact and human interest. While Foshag documented systematic geological processes, Navarro captured moments resonating with public imagination: the church under siege, displaced communities, civilization meeting unstoppable natural forces.

The quality and consistency in images suggests professional training and equipment. His compositions demonstrate understanding of the landscape and evoke pathos. Combined with his access to Kodak’s professional-grade materials, we may assume Navarro was more than a concerned observer.

History’s Mysteries

Navarro’s fade from historical records reflects broader patterns in how scientific events get remembered. Official histories preserve institutional participants while quietly forgetting the names and stories of independent contributors. This is notable with Parícutin, where local Purépecha knowledge proved crucial to understanding volcanic behavior, yet indigenous voices were largely excluded from formal documentation.

Still, Navarro gives us another chance to go there ourselves for a glimpse of those extraordinary hours. His postcards circulated broadly through the popular means of the era—family correspondence, tourist collections, commercial distributors—and are highly collectible today.

As researchers study Foshag’s extensive archives, Navarro’s name remains a tantalizing fragment—present enough to suggest significance, absent enough to resist interpretation. His postcards survive in collections across North America, carrying their maker’s vision but not his story.

This persistence of mystery tells us something about how we remember extraordinary events. While institutions preserve official records with careful attribution, the broader network of individual contributors often dissolves into anonymity. Navarro represents countless others who showed up when history was being made, pointed cameras at crucial moments, contributed to our understanding of the world, and then vanished back into the crowd.

The photographs of the church’s destruction remain powerful because they capture something beyond ecological process—the moment when human scale met geological time and a community’s sacred center became a monument to forces beyond human control. Navarro was there to see it, and that’s a chance for us to remember the event and to admire him.

This essay was inspired by Elena, Maria, and Sandy – with gratitude.

To Read More

Paricutín | Volcano, Mexico, & Eruption | Britannica
https://www.britannica.com/place/Paricutin

Paricutin – Lake Patzcuaro website
http://www.lakepatzcuaro.org/Paricutin-Volcano.html

How Volcanoes Work – the eruption of Paricutin, Mexico
https://volcanoes.sdsu.edu/Paricutin.html

The eruption of Parícutin volcano on a farmer’s cornfield, 1943 – Rare Historical Photos
https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/paricutin-volcano-eruption-photographs/

Paricutín, the volcano that fascinated the world, still captures imaginations
https://mexiconewsdaily.com/mexico-living/paricutin-still-captures-imaginations/

Parícutin: The Birth of a Volcano | Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
https://naturalhistory.si.edu/education/teaching-resources/earth-science/paricutin-birth-volcano

What It Was Like To See A Volcano Being Born – Atlas Obscura
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-it-was-like-to-see-a-volcano-being-born

Garcia, Rafael, Photographs of Paricutin Volcano, 1943-1944 | Smithsonian Institution Archives
https://siarchives.si.edu/collections/fbr_item_modsi666

Michoacán: From kingdom to Colony to Sovereign State (1324-2015) — Indigenous Mexico
https://www.indigenousmexico.org/articles/michoacan-from-kingdom-to-colony-to-sovereign-state-1324-2015

1972 Tourism Year of the Americas

These vintage postcards from the 1972 Tourism Year of the Americas reveal fascinating questions about natural landscapes, heritage, monuments, and whose stories we remember and tell.

In summer 1972, the United States Postal Service issued commemorative postcards that would become enduring symbols of national identity. These postcards, part of the Tourism Year of the Americas campaign, featured iconic destinations with restrained elegance—their two-color printing was both artistic and economical. As America stood at a cultural crossroads, this postcard set tells a familiar American story. More than five decades later, they reveal even more about how a nation sees itself.

Commemorative Moments

First Day of Issue cancellations mark a special moment in time, and signal that an item is expected to be collectible. The postcards were cancelled on June 29, 1972, bearing the commemorative text “Philatelic Exhibition Brussels” and “Tour America Inaugural Rome – Paris.” These international exhibitions promoted American tourism during the Cold War, when cultural diplomacy served as essential soft power.

The carefully designed cancellation artwork includes USS Constellation (6¢), Gloucester (6¢), Monument Valley (6¢), and Niagara Falls (airmail 15¢). These rates reflected the newly reorganized United States Postal Service which had become its own entity the year prior. The 1972 Tourism Year of the Americas was an ambitious initiative from the new quasi-independent agency, emerging alongside Nixon’s opening to China and détente with the Soviet Union.

USS Constellation, the last sail-only warship built by the U.S. Navy (1853-1855), served as flagship of the Africa Squadron from 1859–1861. The ship captured three slave vessels, enabling liberation of 705 Africans. During the Civil War, Constellation deterred Confederate cruisers in the Mediterranean. The selection represented naval heritage and anti-slavery efforts, though it still centered the naval victory rather than those who gained freedom.

Niagara Falls has attracted visitors for 200 years, becoming the symbolic heart of American tourism. The 1883 Niagara Reservation became America’s first state park, influencing national park creation. Current visitor statistics show enduring appeal: 9.5 million tourists visited Niagara Falls State Park in 2023, with the region welcoming 12 million visitors yearly.

Monument Valley reflect the West’s central role in national identity by 1972, immortalized through Hollywood and environmentalism. Yet Monument Valley sits within Navajo Nation territory, while Grand Canyon encompasses land sacred to multiple tribes, including the Havasupai, whose reservation lies within park boundaries—reminders that park creation displaced Native communities.

Gloucester, America’s oldest seaport, sustained coastal communities for centuries. The lighthouse image evoked both practical maritime safety and romantic notions of New England’s rocky shores, while Gloucester’s working harbor embodied the intersection of heritage preservation and living tradition. By 1972, this historic fishing port faced the tension between maintaining its authentic maritime culture and adapting to tourism pressures—a challenge that made it a fitting symbol.

Artistic Vision

The front of the postcards render multiple iconic American locations in distinctive engravings in an economical two-color print run, an important factor for a the government printing office.

The collection showcases a deliberate balance. Yosemite represents natural power and America’s first national park. Missisippi Riverboats and the Rodeo embody western majesty central to national imagination. DC Monuments offer overt patriotism and Williamsburg and the Liberty Bell connect to the tremors and tolls of colonial democracy.

Even in 1972, these were selective narratives. All featured natural sites exist on traditional Indigenous lands, for example, while largely omitting Indigenous perspectives and enslaved people’s contributions to our cultural histories.

Many featured locations are sacred sites to Indigenous communities. Some of the most sacred places for American Indian nations are located in national parks, yet access to holy ground remains contentious. Park creation often involved displacing Native peoples from lands they had stewarded for millennia.

The year 1972 was tough in other ways: Vietnam War divisions, emerging Watergate scandal, and generational alienation over the military draft. These postcards presented a different kind of unity. Rather than contemporary political divisions, they emphasized natural wonders and historical sites that transcended partisan conflicts.

During the Cold War, these postcards served as miniature global ambassadors, too, often providing people’s first visual encounter with American landmarks. They projected America as worthy of visiting and learning about, countering negative impressions from political controversies.

The postcards themselves embody crucial democratic principles: making heritage accessible through affordable media; connecting tourism to conservation through revenue and public appreciation; and revealing how commemorative choices reflect national values. The geographic diversity suggests a desire for the fullest of American experiences, though these 1972 selections still privilege certain narratives.

New Memories

These postcards continue to offer insights into American values and heritage preservation evolution. USS Constellation still serves as a museum ship in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. National parks have experienced tremendous visitation growth, raising questions about balancing access with preservation.

In what they don’t depict, the postcards show gaps in whose stories get told, whose lands get celebrated, whose experiences get centered. While 1972 selections emphasized traditional narratives, contemporary views increasingly include previously marginalized perspectives, acknowledging Indigenous heritage alongside colonial and national stories.

These artifacts remind us that commemorations reveal values and priorities. As our historical understandings evolve, it’s wise to look back and look again.

To Read More

Smithsonian National Postal Museum – https://postalmuseum.si.edu/exhibition/about-us-stamps-modern-period-1940-present-commemorative-issues/1970-1979
Historic Ships in Baltimore – USS Constellation documentation
National Parks Conservation Association – https://www.npca.org/case-studies/national-parks-are-native-lands
U.S. Department of the Interior – https://www.doi.gov/ocl/tribal-co-management-federal-lands
National Park Service – https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/trail-of-broken-treaties.htm
Niagara Falls National Heritage Area – http://www.discoverniagara.org/heritage/history-of-tourism/

Island Time Travel

Native Hawaiian wisdom, mainland capitalism, an LDS mission, and the birth of Pacific tourism. At the center, a banyan tree that has watched Hawaii transform for 120 years. This 1921 real photo postcard reveals the complexities of cultural exchange, migration, and travel over time.

In the photograph we are looking at today, the Moana Hotel rises like a palace from Waikiki Beach, its elegant wings stretching toward Diamond Head. A wooden pier extends into the Pacific. The building’s Victorian details hint at mainland American grandeur transplanted to the tropics. The “First Lady of Waikiki” opened as the territory’s first luxury resort, transforming a landscape once dotted with taro ponds and royal summer homes into the birthplace of Pacific tourism.

Built by wealthy landowner Walter Chamberlain Peacock and designed by architect Oliver G. Traphagen, the Moana opened on March 11, 1901, with 75 rooms featuring Hawaii’s first electric elevator and the unique amenity of private bathrooms. The first guests were a group of Shriners, who paid $1.50 per night—about $50 today—to experience what was then a very remote luxury destination.

Three years later, Jared Smith, Director of the Department of Agriculture Experiment Station, planted what seemed like a simple landscaping choice in the hotel’s courtyard: a young Indian banyan tree, nearly seven feet tall and about seven years old when planted. In the image, the tree is seventeen years old and already creating the shaded sanctuary that is the hotel’s heart even today.

As we flip the postcard over, another dimension is revealed. On November 29, 1921, a simple message sent to Mabel Moss in Longanoxie, Kansas with the usual greetings. But this isn’t a holiday for Aunt Olive. Her return address, “Route 4 – Box 46,” tells its own story of how communities were connecting between ancient and modern, sacred and commercial.

A Mormon Pioneer’s Island Home

Aunt Olive likely lived in Laie, thirty-five miles north of the Moana Hotel, where the Mormon Church had established its Pacific sanctuary. Her Route 4 address would have been served by one of the Rural Free Delivery routes radiating out from Honolulu—a detail that places her among the settlers who were building new communities beyond the city’s tourist corridor.

The Mormon settlement at Laie represented a unique form of cultural encounter. Beginning in 1865, when Church president Brigham Young received permission from King Kamehameha V to establish an agricultural colony, the Latter-Day Saints purchased 6,000 acres of traditional land—a pie-shaped division that provided for sustainable living. The Mormon community tried to honor Hawaiian land practices, giving each family a loi (water garden) to cultivate kalo (taro), the traditional sustenance crop.

The Hawaii Temple, dedicated in 1919, was the first Mormon temple outside continental North America. Built with crushed local lava and coral, its structure embodied the meeting of mainland pioneer culture and Pacific Island materials. Polynesian Saints from across the Pacific were gathering in Laie to receive temple ordinances, creating a multicultural religious community where Hawaiian, Samoan, Maori, and haole (white) families lived side by side.

The LDS approach to missionary work emphasizes learning local languages and customs—not merely as conversion strategy, but as theological principle. One of the early missionaries mastered Hawaiian so thoroughly that he produced the first non-English translation of the Book of Mormon in 1855. The missionaries married into Hawaiian families, adopted local foods and farming methods, and incorporated Polynesian cultural elements into their worship. Even as they openly sought converts, they also saw themselves as students of Hawaiian wisdom.

Paradise Shared

Captured in our image are at least a few conflicting visions of paradise. The Moana Hotel itself represents economic prosperity through the commodification of tropical beauty. Its guests paid premium rates to experience “the ultimate playground,” complete with hula shows and exotic imagery designed for mainland consumption. By the time of this photo, the hotel’s success had already inspired expansion; wings added in 1918 doubled its capacity.

However, the hotel was built where Hawaiian royalty had once gathered, in a place that embodied the Native Hawaiian principles, very different than Western concepts of land as commodity, beauty as product, and culture as entertainment. Look again at the Banyan tree. Where tourists saw scenery, Native Hawaiians understood kino lau—the gods manifested in every plant, animal, and natural feature. But, Hawaiian language had been banned in schools since 1896, and traditional practices were actively discouraged as territorial authorities promoted “Americanization.”

The Mormon community at Laie offered a third way that, despite its evangelical aims, required genuine cultural engagement. Unlike tourists who consumed Hawaiian imagery, or territorial officials who suppressed Hawaiian practices, Mormon missionaries made learning local ways a theological priority. They understood that successful evangelism required fluency not just in Hawaiian language, but in Hawaiian concepts of kinship, land, and spirituality.

This approach created communities that were simultaneously foreign settlements and island adaptations—places where pioneer traditions mixed with Polynesian extended family structures, where American church hymns were sung in native dialects, and where temple architecture incorporated local materials and building techniques.

Time Travel

The tensions that were at work in 1921 continue today, but so do the possibilities for meaningful cultural exchange. Today’s mālama Hawaii movement invites travelers to participate in coral restoration, native forest planting, and beach cleanups. Visitors can learn about places like Waimea Valley, where ancient cultural sites are preserved alongside environmental restoration. The principle of pono—righteous action—guides travelers to maintain respectful distances from endangered monk seals and sea turtles, to support Native Hawaiian-owned businesses, and to understand that they are guests in a living culture, not a theme park.

The island time we seek now isn’t the vacation fantasy of escape from responsibility, but the deeper rhythm of understanding our place within larger cycles of care and connection. When we travel with curiosity rather than conquest, we discover that the most valuable treasures are the stories and perspectives we gather. Over time, we come to know that every place on Earth is someone’s sacred ground.

In Hawaiian tradition, banyan trees serve as gathering places for spirits, bridges between the physical and spiritual worlds. Perhaps this ancient wisdom explains why the Moana Hotel’s banyan courtyard remains a place of peace amid Waikiki’s transformation—a living reminder that some forms of growth honor rather than diminish what came before.