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.
British WWI Hospital Ward RPPCs, a rare paired set, circa 1915–1918
These two real photo postcards document a British auxiliary hospital ward decorated for Christmas, sometime between 1915 and 1918. They are unused and in remarkably good condition. Together they form a matched pair, shot on the same day from opposite ends of the same large convalescence hall.
The architecture, nursing uniforms, iron bed frames, style of celebration, and the back of the cards all point to the same conclusion: a British ward during wartime Christmas, shot by a local photographer working with the same technical materials and conditions as those documented in well-respected the Wellcome Collection in London.
Front of Postcards
The room is large with high ceilings and tall windows running along both sides. Hardwood floors extend the full length of the ward. Iron-framed hospital beds line each wall in neat rows, their white linens crisp and turned. A series of small tables anchor the center aisle, dressed with lace edges and set with tiered decorations, small ornamental figures, and floral arrangements. Crepe paper garlands radiate among the hanging fixtures from the center toward the walls. Nurses in white dresses, bibbed aprons, and distinctive white caps stand at intervals among the beds. Male patients rest in several of the beds or sit up for the photograph.
The first card was shot from one end of the room, looking toward a grand arched window fitted with ornate leaded stained glass and flanking panels in a geometric floral pattern. The second shot looks back the other direction toward an interior archway.
The photographic quality of both cards is high. The tonal range is continuous, with a fine grain and deeply resolved shadows. The nurses in the first image are grouped more loosely near the central table, and a ghostly motion blur in their figures suggests a longer exposure time. The second image is darker and the poses are more formal.
Back of Postcards
The cards share the same markings on the reverse, confirming they came from the same stock and photographer. The back carries the words “Post Card” in a decorative serif typeface, and a clean t-shaped dividing line delineating spaces “For Correspondence” and “Address Only.” No stamp box, printer’s imprint, paper manufacturer mark, or country or origin. That makes this RPPC irrefutably British.
Britain pioneered the divided postcard back in 1902, five years before the United States adopted the format. American RPPCs of the same era almost universally carried manufacturer’s marks such as AZO or VELOX in a printed stamp box, used to identify the photographic paper brand. British cards of this period carried no such mark. The back of these cards places their manufacture firmly in the British tradition.
The absence of any commercial marker further suggests a staff or commercial photographer and local production. These were not mass-produced. They were made in small numbers, likely for official wartime documentation or as personal mementos of a meaningful Christmas.
Two complementary long shots on a memorable day. Paired RPPCs are less common. A matched set intact, from a wartime context more than a century later, is rarer still.
Wartime Convalescence
Britain entered the First World War in August 1914 with 297 trained military nurses. Nowhere near enough for what was coming. Within weeks, the Royal Army Medical Corps and the British Red Cross Society jointly activated the Voluntary Aid Detachment system, mobilizing thousands of civilian volunteers to staff a network of auxiliary hospitals across the country. By 1918, approximately 80,000 VAD members served in uniform. Twelve thousand worked directly in military hospitals. Sixty thousand staffed auxiliary hospitals of various kinds.
The buildings pressed into service ranged from country houses and public schools to civic halls and converted warehouses. The ward in these cards show Gothic Revival arched windows with Arts and Crafts stained glass. The architecture is distinguished with high ceilings and dark wood wainscoting. Perhaps this is a purpose-built civic or private building of Edwardian ambition, converted for wartime use.
The iron bed frames visible in these cards match the tubular iron hospital beds documented in the ward photographs of King George Hospital, the largest military hospital in Britain during the war. Converted from a newly built HM Stationery Office warehouse on Stamford Street, London, the hospital opened in May 1915 and treated some 71,000 men before closing in June 1919. The Wellcome Collection holds its ward photographs. They show the same head and foot rail design, the same lightweight iron construction, the same configuration of beds along the ward walls. This was standard British military hospital specification, and these cards meet it exactly.
Wartime Wardrobe
We can more precisely date these cards by the white caps worn by the nurses. By early 1915, untrained VAD nursing staff had begun adopting the triangular floating veil worn by trained military nurses. Professional nurses were already unhappy about working alongside civilian volunteers. By November 1915, the Joint War Committee introduced a standardized cap for VAD nurses, making distinctions of training and rank visible at a glance.
The caps in these cards match that post-1915 VAD style. They are not the earlier flat cap prior to 1915, nor the fully structured veil of the trained QAIMNS sister. The confidence of the nurses’ poses and the scale of the ward celebration suggest an established wartime routine rather than the improvised urgency of the war’s first Christmas. This may narrow the date to 1916, 1917, or 1918.
Wellcome’s Wartime Collection
The Wellcome Collection’s photographic holdings of The King George Hospital archives open a window onto wartime convalescence. From the start, its philosophy held that recovery from war’s trauma demanded more than medicine.
Each bed had an electric light and a pink and white quilt. Common rooms on each floor were set up for socializing, smoking, reading, and writing letters. A miniature Harrods-like gift shop kept the wards stocked with comforts to necessities. It ordered up to 60,000 cigarettes each week so every patient could have six or seven smokes a day.
Most remarkably, a Royal Academician designed a rooftop garden that eventually held 24 revolving shelters positioned so patients could take in the air and watch the River Thames in all weathers. Queen Alexandra visited in May 1915, and that September she sent the hospital a tripod telescope so patients could study the rooftop view across London. On Christmas Day 1916, King George V and Queen Mary toured every ward in person, and presented each patient with a copy of the Queen’s Gift Book.
The decorated ward in these postcards belongs to that same time period, patriotic conviction, and palliative approach. The lace tablecloth, tiered cake stands, crepe paper garlands, and nurses standing at attention in their best uniforms were elements of organized care for men who had survived the Western Front, deserved a memorable Christmas, and needed more than the doctor’s orders.
