Authentic Funny Leap Year Postcards From 1908
Early 20th-century Leap Year postcards often featured gender stereotypes that are absurd in today’s world. For example, in this comic postcard series, women were depicted wielding guns, axes, dogs, nets, and traps to apprehend men, who could be readily enticed with food and beverages (such as beer, cheese, and pretzels) or cash. Continue reading »
Amazing Early 20th-Century Optical Illusion Skull Postcards
Early in the 20th century, optical illusion skull postcards were hugely popular throughout Europe. Continue reading »
Amazing Vintage Japanese Pachimon Postcards With Famous Places Around the World
Pachimon is a vintage series of budget bromide trading cards made by the Japanese companies Yokopro and Yamapro featuring unauthorized alterations of pre-existing kaiju collaged with other photographic elements. The term Pachimon itself is a fan-created moniker roughly reading as “stolen monsters.” Continue reading »
Vintage Postcards Capture Shopping Malls of the U.S. in the Mid-20th Century
Alabama. Eastwood Mall, Birmingham
The first shopping mall was technically an outdoor shopping plaza that opened in 1922 in Kansas City. However, the first indoor shopping mall that mirrored how we think of malls today was opened in 1956 in Edina, Minnesota. Malls were often anchored by a large department store with a cluster of other stores around it. Continue reading »
Humorous Comic Fat Lady Postcards by Donald McGill From the Early 20th Century
Donald McGill (January 28, 1875 – October 13, 1962) was an English graphic artist whose name has become synonymous with the genre of saucy postcards, particularly associated with the seaside (though they were sold throughout the UK). Continue reading »
Funny Vintage Postcards Depict People Falling From Donkeys in Le Plessis-Robinson, France, ca. 1900
Le Plessis-Robinson is a commune in the southwestern suburbs of Paris, France. It is located 10.5 km (6.5 mi) from the center of Paris. It was first mentioned in 839 as Plessiacus apud Castanetum, meaning plessis near Castanetum. A plessis was a village surrounded by a fence made of branches. Continue reading »
The Futuristic World as Envisioned by Echte Wagner Advertising Cards, 1930
These future fantasy collectible cards were published by the German company Echte Wagner in the first half of the 20th century. Originally Echte Wagner made margarine, and it made a lot of trade cards that were distributed all over Central Europe. In 1930, the True Wagner Margarine created a series of books designed as a display for a collection of stickers made available separately. In this book, there’s a section called Future Fantasy which has no artist or author credited.
The illustrations are beautiful, the technology is actually quite brilliant and not so far-fetched. The book is called Echte Wagner Margarine Album Nr. 3, Serien 12 und 13 (Genuine Wagner Margarine Album Nr. 3″, series 12 and 13). It was published by Elmshorn in Holstein, Germany.
Wireless Private Phone and Television
“Each person has their own transmitter and receiver and can communicate with friends and relatives using certain wavelengths. But television technology has become so advanced that people can talk and watch their friends in real-time. The transmitter and receiver are no longer bound to the location but are carried in a box the size of a photo apparatus.” Continue reading »
Stunning Real Photo Postcards Captured Street Scenes at Night in the 1960s
Hamilton St., Regina Saskatchewan
Production of postcards blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As an easy and quick way for individuals to communicate, they became extremely popular. Continue reading »
Street Scenes of the U.S. From the 1960s Through 30 Wonderful Color Real Photo Postcards
Wenatchee, Washington
Postcards are always of great historical and social interest. In 1903 Kodak introduced the No. 3A Folding Pocket Kodak. The camera, designed for postcard-size film, allowed the general public to take photographs and have them printed on postcard backs, usually in the same dimensions as standard vintage postcards. Many other cameras were used, some of which used glass photographic plates that produced images that had to be cropped in order to fit the postcard format. Continue reading »
A Collection of Fabulous Potato-Themed Real Photo Postcards From the Early 20th Century
WARNING: if you are a PL (Potato Lover), some of these photos might be too hot to handle! Continue reading »
Photographer John Hinde And His Fabulous Colourful Postcards From The Past
The photographer Martin Parr once described the postcards of John Hinde as “some of the strongest images of Britain in the 1960s and 1970s”. Parr noted that Hinde was: “fastidious about the colour, the saturation, the technique, and that paid off.” Continue reading »
Dressed Cats: Postcards From The 1950’s By Artist Eugen Hartung Published By Alfred Mainzer, Inc.
From the 1940s through the 1960s, the Alfred Mainzer Company of Long Island City, NY published a series of linen and photochrome humorous cat postcards illustrated by Eugen Hartung (or Hurtong) (1897–1973), sometimes referred to as “Mainzer Cats”. Continue reading »
Beautiful Postcards Capture Everyday Life Of American Indians In The Early 20th Century
Old Carreta, Laguna Pueblo, New Mexico, circa 1901
The collection is comprised of postcard views of Navaho, Hopi and Pueblo Indians; pueblos; interiors of Hopi houses; ceremonials; and blanket weaving. Views of American Indians, Blackfoot, Apache, Hopi and Pueblo are prints of paintings, some by Winold Reiss for the Great Northern Railway, W.E. Rollins and Fred Harvey. Continue reading »
Romantic French Postcards From The Early 20th Century
Taking erotic pictures and then sending them to your partner seems like something people have always managed to do. In the late 19th century and the early 20th though, taking photographs was not that easy, and exchanging “French Postcards” was that time’s sexting. Continue reading »
This Artist Sends Elaborate Abusive Postcards To Anyone Who Tweet Him With An Address
Mr Bingo grew up in Leigh, Kent and attended The Judd School in Tonbridge. In 1998 he studied a foundation course at the Kent Institute of Art & Design in Maidstone and it was during this year that he played Bingo at Gala Bingo in Maidstone earning him the nickname ‘Bingo’. He went on to study graphic design at Bath Spa University College and specialised in illustration. He graduated in 2001 and moved to London. Continue reading »
Men Behaving Badly On Saucy Vintage Postcards
For some reason, in the early decades of the 20th century it was a “thing” to send sleazy cartoon postcards while on vacation. Looking through postcards from the 1930s-1950s, you’ll find not as many photographs of tourist locations as you will bawdy cartoons. It’s a fascinating social documentation on public tolerance for this risqué subject matter – much of it would be wildly inappropriate today. Continue reading »
Re-Visions, 1978: Bizarre Vintage Photo Postcards By Marcia Resnick
In 1978 Coach House Press published Marcia Resnick’s book, Re-visions, with minimal text and promotional blurbs by an impressive array of artists and writers including Allen Ginsberg, Andy Warhol, and William S. Burroughs. Terry Southern, who complimented Resnick’s success in conveying “her subliminally erotic design” without actually showing penetration, admitted to “responding to the imagery with a healthy and ever-increasing tumescence.” Continue reading »
“Postcards From Google Earth”: This Artist Finds Strange Beauty in Google’s Apocalyptic Glitches
Clement Valla was born in 1971 and lives and works in Brooklyn. He has trained as both an architect and designer. Valla collects screen shots from Google Earth showing various places photographed by satellite (roads, bridges and dams). Some structures that are difficult for software to interpret, give a distorted impression, closely embracing the Earth’s surface. Continue reading »
Incredible Hand-Tinted Postcards Capture 1890s Ireland In Vivid Color
These postcards of the sweeping hills, cliffs, and towns of Ireland were created using the Photochrom process, a complex method of imbuing black-and-white photographs with relatively realistic color.
Glenoe Village, County Antrim.
Library Of Congress
The closely-guarded process was invented in the 1880s by an employee of a Swiss printing company. It entailed coating a tablet of lithographic limestone with a light-sensitive emulsion, then exposing it to sunlight under a photo negative. Continue reading »
The Russia You’ll Never See On Postcards Through The Lens Of Photographer Alexander Petrosyan
Award-winning photographer Alexander Petrosyan has spent decades discovering what makes his home town tick: the everyday comedy and drama of a city built on contradictions. Alexander Petrosyan doesn’t think pictures can change the world, but he does believe they can help you understand it a little better. Having received his first camera as a birthday gift at the age of 12, the photographer quit and came back to the practice several times before turning professional in 2000. Continue reading »
Romantic Colorized Vintage Postcards Show French People During The WWI Era
These brightly colored postcards, sent by French families and soldiers during World War I, are part of a set of similar cards available on Flickr from the George Eastman House. Because sending postcards to soldiers was postage-free during the conflict, the cards were mass-produced in great quantity and variety. Imagery offered solace and urged staunch resolve. Continue reading »
These Ridiculous Propaganda Postcards Warn Men About The Dangers Of Women’s Rights From The Early 20th Century
These incredible vintage postcards are from 1900 to 1914, from the propaganda used against the women’s suffrage and the suffragettes, where change is presented as a direct attack against the values of the family and the place of man in society, sending husbands back at home to look after the children. Continue reading »
Beauty Over 100 Years Ago: 35 Stunning Postcards Of Beautiful Girls In Over The World From The 1900s And 1910s
They are just simply pure and beautiful! Continue reading »
100-Year-Old Hand-Colored Postcards Offer A Fascinating Glimpse Of Pre-War Japan
Cherry blossom at Mukojima, Tokyo
Postcards can offer a fascinating glimpse into eras that have long since passed. The Digital Collections of the New York Public Library (NYPL) has released a selection of postcards from Japan in the early 20th century. Comprising hand-colored photographs, these landscape snapshots represent the country—specifically the Tokyo and Yokohama regions—and the culture at a time when it was on the cusp of modernity. Many of the photographs are dated from the years 1907 through 1922. Continue reading »
A 19th-Century Vision of the Year 2000
A series of futuristic pictures by Jean-Marc Côté and other artists issued in France in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1910. Originally in the form of paper cards enclosed in cigarette/cigar boxes and, later, as postcards, the images depicted the world as it was imagined to be like in the then distant year of 2000.
Continue reading »
