Sepia Saturday 153 - children in oriental costume

Firstly, a big thank you to everyone who has been following this blog. Today I reached 100 followers. My vintage magazines blog and In Search of Space blog are less well read, so if you have time maybe cast your eye their way to see if there's anything of interest.

I am a bit early posting this week as I have a couple of days of work as our leave year comes to an end next week. Today has been spent catching up on a few maintenance activities on my web site, which were long overdue and hopefully my site is better for having carried them out. In particular I have played around with the image sizes and code on a couple of my postcard pages, and now they seem to load much quicker than before, so fingers-crossed people will not get bored waiting for the images to load. Bear with me though please as I've only updated a handful of the more regularly visited pages for now to see what the impact is. I have also added a batch of vintage railway magazines which I've had sitting around on my desk for a few months. Again this is work in progress, with about the same number still to add. Tomorrow will see us forming our annual, advanced party on the Christmas shopping front in Winchester, so no time for PC work then, hence my early posting this week. Phew!

So, on to this week's Sepia Saturday and staying reasonably on theme. I have always been intrigued by postcards of people or groups of people which have no text or annotation to say who they are or what they are doing. I can only assume they were produced for a very small audience who knew exactly what they were. One such vintage postcard I picked up a week or two back is the one I've included below. I assume this is some sort of school play, or perhaps some childhood amateur dramatic society, but really I have no idea as there's no clue on the postcard, and no date either. I know there are some super-sleuths out there, so maybe someone has an idea?

Vintage postcard of children in oriental costumes

As usual 100's of vintage postcards can be found on my (hopefully speeded-up) website

Sepia Saturday 97 - Children's Corner

For this week's Sepia Saturday I am staying loosely on theme, and in fact building on the theme of children in Alan's posting by sharing a handful of vintage postcards of Children's Corners. Having come across one on a vintage postcard some time ago, I was surprised to find them fairly common and came across 2 further ones. Apart from the first one however, there seems to be a distinct lack of children.

Bournemouth, Children's Corner, c.1953

Blackpool, Children's Corner, c.1920

Scarborough, Children's Corner

As usual 100's of vintage postcards can be found on my web site.

Vintage postcards of Dutch children, clogs and windmills

I came across this old postcard a few weeks ago but until now it had managed to hide itself away towards the bottom of the 'to be processed' pile. It's a vintage postcard from 1913 of, I assume, a Dutch boy, in clogs and smoking a pipe. The postcard was published by Meissner & Buch in the 'Jung Holland' series.

Dutch boy with clogs and a pipe, c.1913

Even further in my distant memory was another Dutch vintage postcard I picked up a few years ago. Thanks to filing the scans under something meaningful (and memorable) I was able to find this one as well.

Dutch children, published by Heritage Mint

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

Sepia Saturday 95 - Letter From Mama

Try as I may, for this week's Sepia Saturday I am alas not theming. Instead I am offering up a vintage postcard called 'Letter From Mama', c.1903. The postcard was published by S.Hildesheimer and the written greeting reads 'We have received a letter from M to say they will not be able to visit us on Sunday. Love from all.' Maybe however, one of these girls moved to Denmark and became a suffragette, or maybe the letter is from their mother, who happened to be a suffragette in Denmark.Alternatively I could just be clutching at straws trying to make up for my inability to theme this week.

Letter from Mama, c.1903

As usual 100's more vintage postcards on my web site, and frustratingly still a pile of 200 or so to process.

    

Postcard Friendship Friday 71

Interesting theme this week on Postcard Friendship Friday. Children definitely grow up far too early these days and the purity and innocence of childhood doesn't seem to exist in the same form any more. I thought these two vintage postcards captured the innocence of long lost childhood quite nicely.

Vintage postcard published by S.Hildesheimer

Mischief, vintage postcard published by J.W.B

As usual, more vintage postcards on my web site

Vintage postcards by Mabel Lucie Attwell

A bit of a departure from my normal vintage postcard blog posts today. I'm not normally a fan of comic postcards but thought these ones had a unique quality and innocence about them. They are all drawn by the artist Mabel Lucie Attwell, and published by Valentine some time in the 1950's.

Why be 'out' - an' 'on the go'
There's something to be said
You Know
For pussy cats - an' knitting!

Published by Valentine, number 1165, c.1956

Down in the forest
Something Stirred!

Published by Valentine, number 1865, c.1953

Thumbs up - an' don't
Let's look at the 'oles!

Published by Valentine, number 1161, c.1956

As always, postcards like these can be found on my vintage postcards web site