This is also why I was on my knees for half an hour in Oxfam the other day, having discovered two large boxes on the floor crammed absolutely full with old postcards. Just like going through a stack of records or a rack of clothes in a second-hand shop, you know you have to go tirelessly through every one, to flick past the majority of more predictable donations so as not to miss something a little more interesting tucked away in their midst...
Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward
'Elegance, Charm and Deadly Danger'
'The Maine Lobster is the most famous of all the shell fish'
Piccadilly Circus, 1960
The Woods at Pontarddulais (Frith's Series)
Linocut of 'The Blue Plough, Saffron Walden' by Edward Bawden
'Cenoceras' from The British Museum
'Study of a Cat' by F Ernest Jackson from the Royal Academy
'A little more interesting?' This a great haul! I love the Saffron Walden linocut and, of course, the cool Lady Penelope card too.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you're like me, but whenever I stumble upon some treasure in a charity shop, usually records in my case, however good it is, or they are, my first thought is always...'This person clearly had great taste - I wonder what else they donated that I've missed'. Like Muddy Waters said, I can't be satisfied.
You have to go through a lot of very similar photo montages of seaside towns to get them though...
DeleteI do know what you mean about wondering about what else you might have missed. It's generally just a fleeting thought for me; however, I think Mr SDS can very much relate to it!
I love postcards too -- I have loads of them (and old flyers) that I put in photo albums for design/image reference and inspiration. Nowadays I use Pinterest for the same thing...!
ReplyDeleteHi - yes postcards and flyers are great, aren't they? - I should put mine in an album too, at the moment they're just loose in random places... good idea about Pinterest!
DeleteSplendid. I love Lady P. and Piccadilly Circus. More please.
ReplyDeleteAh- might have to start a little postcard series, then - there are some cool ones I've been given/sent too.
DeleteThe dull seaside ones can be just that, dull; but the scribbled words on the other side often contain comedy gold.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I'll have to flip the box round next time and just look at the words, not the pictures?
DeleteWhilst most of the arty ones I go for aren't written on, there is something scrawled in Italian on the Piccadilly Circus one and a lovely old 1960 stamp - for some reason it made its way to Rome and then ended up back here.
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The prize has to go to Lady Penelope.
ReplyDeleteNew England :shakeshead:...I'd probably eaten 5,000 lbs of raw Apalachicola oysters before I even knew there was a place called Maine...much less that they had lobsters. Pfffff
:)
I love the gigantic Coke-cola sign in Piccadilly.
There's a stash of postcards at an antique store here...and like you I cannot just thumb through them. So, I just stick to buying two or three at a time and when I've got those I stop. My favorites are a section of Meso-American (could be Inca, Aztec...I don't remember) wall...with carved faces sticking out of it. Then there's a colored picture from the Parlor in Mark Twain Caverns. Each section and bump is painted in a different pastel color...it's beautiful really.
The lobster pic just looked arty to me. It's so lurid! I started Googling 'lobsters as pets' last night (you know my fondness for such things) and ended up finding out all about the poet Gérard de Nerval, so there you go.
DeleteThe cards you describe sound great...
I just thought the caption was funny...The Most Famous of All the Shell Fish. Ha
DeleteI loved the old colorized ones. I just pin them to the wall in my room where there's space.
Now I'm off to read about Gerard.
I feel another post brewing....!
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