Vintage postcard - Trafalgar Square, London

Thought I'd post this vintage postcard of Trafalgar Square in London by way of a contrast to what it will look like as midnight approaches tonight and the old year is seen out and the new year seen in, when it will be filled with revellers. Happy New Year everyone.

Trafalgar Square, London

Loads more vintage postcards of London on my web site

Vintage postcards by Meissner and Buch

Another fairly recent find were these 2 artist drawn, vintage postcards published by Meissner and Buch. Again I am assuming that because of the very similar style they are both by the same artist, but I can't be sure. The postcards have no indication of the artist, although the more I stare at the Mill on the Avon card, the more the blades of grass in the foreground seem to contain initials. Both postcards are unposted so no idea about the date I'm afraid but I would guess 1930's? If anyone can shed any light on the artist I would be really grateful.

Mill on the Avon, published by Meissner and Buch

A Hayfield, Buckinghamshire, published by Meissner and Buch

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

Vintage postcards of North Wales

Despite my best efforts to maintain my postcards in some sort of vaguely coherent order, I keep finding Lancashire ones buried deep within the Yorkshire section, and postcards of Devon mis-filed almost everywhere. However, one of the good fortunes in having to sort through them today to try and locate one that someone had ordered, was that I came across these 2 beautiful artist drawn, vintage postcards of North Wales, which I'm pretty sure I've never blogged about. I assume they are by the same artist as the style is very similar, but unfortunately there is no indication on the postcard. Despite their similarities however they have different publishers.

 Near Capel Curig, North Wales, published by B.B. London, series A2, c.1907

Near Cader Idris, North Wales, c.1908

More vintage postcards of Wales can be found 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 - 24th December

My Christmas Eve vintage postcard is another one of those slightly odd, minimalist combo cards. Compared to some of the others I have shared this one is quite 'dull' but nevertheless does have a certain charm. I suspect for many of you this will be the last of the 25 postcards and cards you'll see this side of Christmas as you'll no doubt be very busy this evening and tomorrow. So thanks to everyone for all the wonderful comments and I hope you all have a fantasic Christmas and New Year. To see a web page with all 25 postcards and cards, please have a look at my vintage postcard advent calendar ... although you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the last one to reveal itself.

Vintage Christmas greetings postcard, published by Wildt and Kray

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

    

Vintge postcard advent calendar - December 23rd

This is one of the Christmas postcards which I was considering not using as I didn't think it was that good. However, the scanner has definitely brought the colours out better than they look on the actual postcard. The postcard has not been posted so no idea about the date I'm afraid.

Vintage Christmas greetings postcard, published by E.A.Schwerdtfeger

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Sepia Saturday 55 - Christmas and the Empire, c.1898

My blog entry for the Christmas Sepia Saturday is causing my normally ordered mind some internal grief ... it's not Saturday, my posting is not sepia, it's not festive and although it's not a postcard I'm putting it on my vintage postcard blog. The reason for breaking all 4 unwritten rules is that I was inspired by the word 'Empire' in Alan's post. I can't have looked through my childhood stamp collection for years, but the vivid memory I had of this stamp was overwhelming. It took a while to find it but I had at least remembered it came from Canada, which narrowed it down a bit.

Actually, since starting this write-up I realised that I have in fact, albeit accidentally, not broken one of the rules. Something I had never noticed before until I scanned the stamp was that it infact is a Christmas stamp, from 1898. The 'empire' link was obviously more memorable to me with the wording 'We Hold A Vaster Empire Than Has Been'. This is not meant to be a jingoistic post, but more a reflection on our history, and the importance placed on 'empire' by many nations at the time. Perhaps I should do a follow-up in the New Year called 'The Empire Strikes Back', to reflect the decline of the Empire and the quest for independence from it.

1898 Christmas stamp from Canada, 'We Hold a Vaster Empire Than Has Been'

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - 22nd December

Just 3 days to go now. It's been a strange build up to Christmas for me this year. As there was a full week leading up to the big day, I've not taken any time off work (thought I'd save it for the summer assuming we have one this year). So whilst these posts are keeping me festive, most other things are continuing as normal, including work which should be winding down but if anything is ramping up.

Vintage Christmas greetings postcard, published by Birn Brothers

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 19th, 20th and 21st

Once again I seem to have managed to get hopelessly behind with what I had hoped to be daily postings, so today I'm posting 3-in-1 again. These are all vintage Christmas greetings cards rather than postcards. My favourite is the first one, probably because it's by one of my favourite publishers, Raphael Tuck.

Vintage Christmas card published by Raphael Tuck

Vintage Christmas card, published by Wildt and Kray

Vintage Christmas card, published by Wildt and Kray

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

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 18th

For today's advent calendar postcard, here's another of those odd 'multi-theme' postcards. I think either the holly or the snowy scene would have worked well in their own way, but to combine them seems odd to me.

Vintage Christmas Greeting postcard published by Stewart and Woolf, c.1908

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Vintage postcard of Elsecar - Sepia Saturday 54

When I was looking through my vintage postcards for something sepia that I'd not yet blogged about, this one leapt out at me. As this postcard is of Yorkshire, I'm more than sure that Alan can tell us all loads more about it, but again for me the location is somewhere I've only ever visited via vintage postcard.

Real photographic, vintage postcard of Church Street, Elsecar, South Yorkshire

100's more vintage postcards on my web site as well as my vintage postcard advent calendar

Vintage postcards - Winter scenes

Having posted the majority, if not all of my vintage Christmas postcards and cards as part of my vintage postcard advent calendar, I have decided to break with the Christmas posts for a while but keep firmly in winter. The 3 vintage postcards below are all lovely winter scenes, but other than that I know very little about them. The 2nd and 3rd are both panel cards published by C.W.Faulkner, with the 3rd having the artist initials of J.W.G or possibly J.M.G ... anyone know who that might be?

Olio postcard published by G.A.and Co., Ltd

Vintage panel postcard published by C.W.Faulkner, by the artist J.W.G

Vintage panel postcard published by C.W.Faulkner, c.1917

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

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 14th, 15th, 16th and 17th

I didn't quite plan to post 4 days in one but the weather in Europe this week changed my plans. Following a delayed flight to Cologne which was diverted to Frankfurt because Cologne airport was briefly closed and the plane did not have enough fuel to continue circling, we eventually arrived at Cologne some 4 hours late at 2am. This was followed by 2 days of meetings and a bit of Christmas partying, so needless to say even though I'd prepared myself to upload in my absence there was no time - I must investigate the 'post options' for a future time. Anyway, enough rambling, below are the vintage postcards and cards for December 14th - 17th.

Vintage Christmas Greetings postcard, published by Raphael Tuck, by the artist Ernest Longstaffe, c.1908.

Vintage Christmas card published by Wildt and Kray

Vintage Christmas Greetings postcard, published by Ernest Nister, c.1913

Vintage Christmas card published by Raphael Tuck

Check out my web site for the full vintage postcard advent calendar

    

Theme Thursday - Map

Apologies for perhaps the lack of imagination in my entry this week, but it was quick and easy (note to self - must make New Year resolution to address work-life balance). It's a vintage postcard showing a map of South Wales. Nice to see the Gower Peninsula on there as I spent lots of time there in my youth.

As usual, 100's more vintage postcards in my web site

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 11th, 12th and 13th

Sorry, busy weekend. No time for words, just pictures ... early part of the coming week looks manic too, but hopefully 'normal' service will resume soon.

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

    

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

    

Sepia Saturday - Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities

To continue with the Edinburgh connection that Alan started this week, my offering for this week's Sepia Saturday is a sepia, vintage postcard of the Edinburgh Museum of Antiquities, published by Wrench and dating back to the early 1900's. Admittedly I only undertook the briefest of internet research but I couldn't work out whether this bulding is still standing. A museum of the same name still seems to exist but would appear to look nothing like this. Hopefully there's someone "in the know" reading this who can help.

For anyone interested, there are loads of vintage postcards of Scotland on my web site

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 8th and 9th

Apologies to anyone who was eagerly awaiting the December 8th postcard in the small hours of Wednesday morning. I has an opportunity last night to partake in some festive ale. It was only a small evening out in the local pub with other long suffering dads who spend every Sunday afternoon wathcing their kids play football, come rain or shine ... or snow, but unfortunately I did not have time to post the blog entry. So here are the postcards for December 8th and December 9th.

All Christmas Joys be Thine, published by Valentine

Fond Wishes for a Happy Christmas

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

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 7th

Another vintage Christmas card again today as opposed to a postcard, and another published by Raphael Tuck. Delicately made with a small lilac cord holding the card and inner together. I think the scan has come out ok, but just in case not, the card reads 'Fair days that know not any change or care'.

More postcards on my vintage postcards website, and also the full vintage Christmas postcard advent calendar

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 6th

Today's vintage postcard advent calendar entry is actual a vintage Christmas card as opposed to a postcard. It was published by Raphael Tuck, c.1909.

The full vintage postcard advent calendar can be found on my web site, along with 100's of other vintage postcards

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 5th

Wow, we're already on 5th December - this month is just slipping away. I'm posting this one up a few hours early as we're off to a pre-Christmas party so just in case I over indulge in the festive ale, I thought it sensible to get this done beforehand. This is another of my favourites but unfortunately I don't know much about it. The publisher is 'PF' but it's not been posted so again I have no idea of date, but would assume it dates back to around the early part of the last century.

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site, and the full vintage postcards advent calendar can also be found there

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 4th

After the revelation that what I thought was a vintage Christmas postcard in yestarday's entry in fact said the word 'choristers' rather than 'Christmas', I've been extra sure that today's postcard is Christmas. This vintage postcard was published by J.Welch in 1906. Even though it says Xmas, it is almost a mix between a Valentine card and a Christmas card.

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site, and if you've missed the previous day's Christmas postcards, why not have a look at my vintage postcard advent calendar where you can see current day's postcard, plus the postcards from earlier in the month.

    

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 3rd

I'm very pleased (and slightly embarassed) to say that I have now fixed the glitch on the vintage postcards advent calendar so you should now all be able to see the current day's postcard and previous day's. Today's Christmas postcard is called 'The Village Christmas', published by Lonsdale and Bartholomew. It's not been posted so I have no idea of the date, but imagine that it's around the early 1900's. Apart from the word 'Christmas' on the card itself, it's not especially festive, unless the violin player and the geese have some sort of Christmas significance? Ah, hang-on, literally as I wrote the word 'geese' the penny dropped ... this is, I assume, 'six geese are laying' from the 12 days of Christmas.

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site

    

Sepia Saturday - the letter 'W', vintage postcard from 1906

My Sepia Saturday post for this week is brought to you by the letter 'W'. Sorry, couldn't resisit that. This is a very curious vintage postcard which I first assumed was just trees, but the more I looked into it, the more I realised it was most likely in fact some sort of letter card, in this case the letter 'W'. I could of course be imagining this, but given that the postcard was sent by someone called Willie, I'm pretty sure it is in fact a 'W'. The postcard was published by Rotary and dates back to May 1906.

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site, and if you're feeling at all festive then take a look at my vintage postcard advent calendar

Theme Thursday - Stone

I missed not having a Theme Thursday to contribute to last week, but here's my offering for this week's theme. These are a set of vintage postcards from a British Museum set of Precious Stone postcards, published around the 1920's.

 

As always, 100's more vintage postcards on my web site, and if you're feeling festive why not have a look at my vintage postcard advent calendar blog posts - 1 festive postcard per day until 25th December.

Vintage posctard advent calendar - December 2nd

Sincere apologies to anyone who tried to follow the link to the interactive vintage postcard advent calendar on my own web site, only to find that it doesn't work. All I can say is that it worked fine on my PC at home, so when I get back tomorrow I'll have to see if I can fix it - maybe I just forgot to upload one of the files to the server, although I can see the javascript file on the server from here and it's identical to the one I used locally!?!?!?!. What it should do is allow you to view the postcard for the current day, and any earlier days in December, but not those for days yet to come. Unfortunately what it seems to be doing is preventing you from seeing any of the days, even though the logic is right and is displaying the right day values in the 'error' message. Anyway, enough techno-babble, fortunately I can control the blog postings when I'm away from home, so here's the vintage Christmas postcard for 2nd December. I know I said this yesterday as well, but this is one of my favourite Christmas postcards, and I've never seen anything quite like it anywhere else.

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



     

Vintage postcard advent calendar - December 1st

Seeing as all the children will be rushing downstairs to open their Advent calendars for the next 25 days, or 31 if they are fortunate enough to have one that goes right up to New Year, I thought it was only right to also have a calendar for, dare I say, the more mature audience (and I include myself in that category). So, what I plan to do is to share a vintage Christmas postcard or vintage Christmas card every day from 1st December through to 25th December. To compliment the blog entries, I will also have an online version of the vintage postcard advent calendar on my web site where, if my somewhat basic HTML and Javascript coding techniques have worked correctly, will allow you to open a window each day up to 25th December, but of course not to peek beyond that !! No idea how time zones will work, so maybe the people in Australia will get to see the postcards 12 hours or so earlier than the UK, and those in the UK 5 to 7 hours later? Anyhow, without further ado, the first vintage Christmas postcard is below. This is one of may favourites and I was torn between opening the theme with this one or leaving it until last. After much deliberation I decided to open with it to whet your appetites for the rest of the month.

Vintage Christmas postcard by the artist K.E.Cowderoy, published by Raphael Tuck in the Christmas series, C126

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

    

Artist drawn vintage postcards of Clovelly, Devon

I really wish I had some Thanksgiving postcards to share along with all the great ones posted on the various blogs I follow, but in the UK it's not something we celebrate and I've never even come across any. I was almost tempted to start blogging my Christmas postcards but will hold off until December if I can. So, for my submission to Postcard Freindship Friday this week, I've decided to share some vintage postcards of Clovelly in North Devon. Most of the postcards of Clovelly I've had in the past are of the hill leading to/from the harbour and beach, but these 3 are actually of the harbour and beach. All 3 are artist drawn postcards, published by Raphael Tuck, but only the 2nd one has an artist name, G.H.Jenkins. None of them have been posted but I would guess the date to be early 1900's.

As always, 100's more vintage postcards and vintage magazines and books can be found on my web site

Where's all the snow we were promised?

My kids all got very excited earlier this week when they heard there was going to be snow this week, and no doubt are expecting their school to be closed allowing them to enjoy hours of snowman building and snowballing like last winter. However, apart from the odd flek around lunchtime we saw nothing so I suspect when they get home from school they'll be disappointed. Whilst I can't make it snow, I can share this snowy vintage postcard from 1907. It's deliberately not an overtly Christmas postcard (yet) as I want to reserve those firmly for December.

A Snow Idyll, in the Palace Yard, Gloucester, published by Burrow

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

Vintage postcards of Chanctonbury Ring, Sussex

Having recently stumbled across these 2 wonderful vintage postcards of Chanctonbury Ring in Sussex, it's become yet another place to add to my "to be visited" list. Chanctonbury Ring is a hill fort and artifacts found there suggest it was constructed around the 6th or 5th century BC. Various legends surround the ring, including increasing fertility and summoning the devil ... might be tricky though if bits of those rituals get mixed up !! Both postcards are published by J.Salmon Ltd., and although have no artist name or initials on the cards, they do look very like something that A.R.Quinton might have painted - anyone know for sure?

Chanctonbury Ring, Wiston Pond, South Downs

Chanctonbury Ring and Dew Pond

As always, loads more vintage postcards on my web site

Sepia Saturday - Weston-Super-Mare

A couple of my favorite sepia vintage postcards are these 2 of Weston-Super-Mare. Neither are postally used so unfortunately I have no idea of the date. Often jokingly called Weston-Super-Mud, I think these 2 postcards dispell that myth somewhat. I wonder if that diving board is still there, or whether health and safety have closed it down ... or even whether the outdoor pool is there?

Weston-Super-Mare, the Bathing Pools and Marine Lake

Weston-Super-Mare, the Swimming Pool

As always, 100's more vintage postcards can be found on my web site

Sepia Saturday - Jenny and Peter

I picked up this photo postcard a few weeks ago. It features a seated woman and a standing man in a fairly anonymous looking military uniform of some sort. Their names are Jenny and Peter as the photo is signed by them on the reverse. The only uniform insignia of any sort I can see is on his lower right-hand sleeve but not sure what it is ... does anyone out there know more?

As always, lots more vintage postcards on my web site

Vintage postcards of the Lake District by G.P.Abraham

I've always had several vintage postcards of the Lake District by the publisher G.P.Abraham but have never shared them as they wer black and white and the scans never seemed to do justice to the postcard. However, a few weeks ago I was delighted to come across some colour postcards by G.P.Abraham, and if anything the scans make the postcards look even better. All the postcard are postally unused so not sure of the date.

Ullswater and Place Fell

Ullswater

 

Derwentwater

As usual, 100's of vintage postcards and vintage magazines on my web site