Have you seen the great new film The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Claire Foy and Andrea Riseborough, with Olivia Colman narrating? If you reply in the negative, I’m not surprised as it lasted just a week at our local Showcase cinemas. The Odeon chain was showing it as well, so you Read More …

These two postcards really are a bit of magic, the Edwardian era’s photoshop. The Rotary Photographic Co., market leaders in the production of postcards of Royalty and celebrities, showed a touch of creativity in designing many of their cards, in particular taking individual portraits and montaging them in a printing blender to create an impressive Read More …

It’s difficult to imagine what it was like when picture postcards exploded in production round about 1903. Although the first pictorial cards began to be published commercially in 1894, it took another eight or nine years before their presence on the High Street began to make itself felt. For sure, postcard were available for most Read More …

For a couple of decades at the start of the 20th century, picture postcards reigned supreme in the seasonal greetings market. Costing just one halfpenny to post compared with double that for a folded greetings card, postcards soon eclipsed that market. And what a wealth of subjects appeared on Edwardian Christmas postcards! Images of holly Read More …

It is often said that every conceivable subject has appeared on picture postcards, but sometimes it is quite astonishing just how many different cards on a particular theme can actually be found. I found that to be true when I went looking for postcards of guitars. What a range I discovered, from old real photographic Read More …

I’m prone to misquote Dr. Johnson in saying “He who is tired of postcards is tired of life” (actually he said London). Samuel Johnson (who has statues to him in Lichfield and London) found the capital endlessly fascinating, and liked nothing better than to wander round exploring it. I feel there’s much the same satisfaction Read More …

I’m talking statues today. On postcards, obviously. Those edifices that we walk past all the time (well, in normal times, anyway) without giving much of a thought to who they  represent. Most are pretty old, anyway. The Victorians loved erecting thes tributes to local heroes, but sometimes they become an embarrassment to generations that follow. Read More …

Do you send Easter cards? I never have until this year when I sent two Edwardian postcards with current first class stamps on to family. And that compares with maybe a couple of hundred Christmas cards. Plenty of Easter greetings folded cards are on sale in the shops, as the religious festival has been added Read More …

John Claydon’s Confessions of a collector part 4   Discovering postcard Art Nouveau (or Mucha do about nothing)   To mark the 100th anniversary of the first UK postcard in 1870, the V&A held a ground-breaking exhibition.  It turned out to be the critical motivating factor which led to the revival of postcard collecting as Read More …

April 6th 2020   John Claydon’s ‘Confessions of a collector’ part 3     While I was studying history at school and then university in the late 60s and early 70s, the second great age of postcard collecting had not quite established itself.  I acquired cards whenever I could, with the great benefit that I Read More …