Theme Thursday - Sweet

Couldn't resist sharing this vintage postcard for this week's Theme Thursday of sweet. It's a vintage postcard by the artist E.L.Beckles, and was published by Valentine. The postcard is postally unused so I'm unsure of the date but would guess late 1940's/early 1950's.

Sweets For The Sweet

As usual 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

Sepia Saturday 76: cats

Good post again this week Alan, lots for the Sepia Saturday themers to play with. Of all the possibilities liked to your post, I've chosen cats, mainly because the items I had related to the other possible themes all seemed not to be sepia enough. Also, I am a cat-person, and this postcard reminds me of when our 2 cats were newly arrived kittens, with that permanent look of surprise on their faces.

A Happy Family, real photographic vintage postcard published by Wildt and Kray, c.1930

100's more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - Christmas Day - 25th December

Well, I finally come to the last of the 25 vintage Christmas postcards and cards, and I'm signing off, a few hours early unless you're in Australia or New Zealand, with probably my favourite. When I started out with the intention of posting a card a day throughout December, I thought it would be quite easy, but as you'll have noticed there were some days where I had to play catchup and post 2 or 3 on the same day. I hope everyone has enjoyed the advent calendar and I wish you all a very Happy Christmas and New Year. In the meantime, now that I've finished work until next year, I'll have to don my thinking cap and come up with some imaginative vintage postcard themes for 2011 ... and one of my New Year's resolutions will to to devote more time and energy to my vintage books and magazines blog whilst of course not neglecting this one.

Vintage Christmas card, published by Wildt and Kray

More vintage postcards can be found on my web site. Categories include Raphael Tuck, Frith, Valentine, English topographical, greetings postcards, and many, many more.

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 10th

This may be my last post for a couple of days, all depends whether there's a decent enough GPRS or 3G signal where I'm going. One thing's for sure there's definitely no wi-fi. This is probably the strangest vintage Christmas postcard I've come across. For me the strangeness is that nothing seems to fit together. The three people on horses all look as though they're from different disciplines (jockey, huntsman and cowboy) and then there's the insert of the 3 cats oddly placed across what I assume is the snowy background.

As always 100's more vintage postcards on my web site and also the full advent calendar

    

Vintage postcards of kittens by C.W.Faulkner

Over the last year I have posted a couple of blog entries featuring cats. The first was a vintage Christmas card of a black cat carrying a Christmas Pudding, closely followed by a selection of artist drawn vintage postcards of cats and kittens by E.L.Beckles. When I came across these last week I knew straight away what my next blog post would be.

These are wonderful vignette style, vintage postcards of kittens. They are all published by C.W.Faulkner. None of them have been posted so I'm afraid I can't tell you anything about the date, but if I had to guess I would say pre-1940. My favourite is probably the one called 'Is dinner ready?' These kittens seem so very well mannered ... when my cats are hungry they reach up my legs, or stalk around their empty plates.

Two Snowballs

Is Dinner Ready?

Expectation

Three of Us

As usual there are 100's more vintage postcards on my vintage postcards web site

Cute Kittens, by artist E.L.Beckles

Well, what a great find these vintage postcards were. Amongst a whole bunch of modern, and quite honestly uninteresting postcards, I found these. As I was flicking through the batch quite quickly I only spotted one initially, but something made me go back and look more closely, unearthing another two.

I do wonder if I had looked through all the racks in that much detail whether I would have found the complete set.

All 3 postcards are by a postcard artist who is new to me, E.L.Beckles, and were published by Valentine in the Kitten series. None of them are postally used but date to around the late 1940's or early 1950's.

What I particularly like is that the kittens are cute, but not overly so (if that makes sense). The colours are striking yet subtle at the same time. I think my favourite of the 3 is probably Sweets For the Sweet, although this final one, Three Little Beauties, is also lovely.

As usual, postcards like these and 100's of others can be found on my vintage postcards website

Black Cat Carries the Christmas Pudding - vintage Christmas card

Ok, so this is a vintage Christmas card rather than a vintage postcard, but isn't it great? It's published by Wildt and Kray. I just love the expression on the cat's face, it's kind of like "well why on earth wouldn't you expect to see a black cat in red bow-tie carrying a Christmas pudding".

Artist Drawn Vintage Postcards

One aspect of collecting vintage postcards that has me hooked at the moment is artist drawn, or artist signed, postcards. I've managed to unearth some great postcards by the likes of Brian Gerald, Ernest Longstaffe, Henry Wimbush and W.W.Quatremain, covering mainly landscapes, and Edgar Hunt, Molly Brett, Mabel Gear and Mabel Lucie Attwell covering subjects of a more illustrative nature, e.g. children, nursery rhymes, cats, or normally kittens, and other aminals.

<- We Are Four, vintage postcard by Mabel Gear

Clearly with so many postcard artists I am only beginning to scratch the surface but it's making for an interesting past-time. It's probably Brian Gerald that is currently generating the most interest for me and I've set up a Brian Gerald group on Flickr! ... if anyone has any Brian Gerald postcards they would like to share with a wider audience, please feel free to join and upload.

Kewstoke Woods, Weston-Super-Mare by artist Brian Gerald, published by Valentine, number A869 ->

Feel free to visit my vintage postcard web pages and have a browse around ... and maybe even buy something!