Vintage postcards

Hoping to See Your Face Again Next Year: Donald McGill’s Saucy Holiday Cheer

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New traditions appear very easily – do something for a second time, and hey presto, it’s a tradition! Since last December was enlivened by some mushroom postcards — see Fungus Friday: Amanita New Year (To Get Over This One) — this year I’m bringing back English master Donald McGill, King of Saucy Postcards for an old-yet-new-to-us crop of festive offerings from some hundred + years ago (the following are from the 1910s and 1920s).

These run the gamut from cheeky to raunchy to creepy, in the classic vein of ghosts for Christmas*. Speaking of Christmas, it may now be over, but the spirit of holiday cheer sure isn’t gone (despite the total absence of snow in these normally snow-covered lands of ours), so let’s have a look!

Some involve all sorts of hivernal mishaps —

The consequences of pre-holiday, er… cheer.

Some of the usual daydreams brought about by possibly too many spirits** —

— and the aforementioned ghosts, somehow especially startling when they’re born under McGill’s pen.

I’ve kept my absolute favourite for last: this revenant is so sad yet grotesque. I’d like to see the faces of people who got mailed this particular card!

~ ds

* As per another lovely tradition, we’ve recently been rewatching Christopher Lee’s Ghost Stories for Christmas. Highly recommended! Some are available on Youtube, like for example Number 13.

** As somebody who attended the Christmas office party this year, I can attest to the funny influence alcohol has on a bunch of normally restrained people when it comes to romantic advances.

Hallowe’en Countdown VII, Day 3

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Hi there! Co-admin RG asked for some assistance with his Halloween count-down (admittedly, 31 posts in a row is a bit much), so I’m here each Tuesday for the month to come, a throw-back to the Tentacle Tuesdays of yesteryear.

As you probably noticed, we like supposed bad omens around here, and lean into superstitions, too. I consider a black cat crossing my path is as a definite stroke of luck, as is having one of those beautiful silky beasts at home at all times (we are blessed with one such beast). The anglophone world has long had a tortuous relationship with black felines. Harbinger of luck or malevolent pawn of Satan? Flip a coin. Nevertheless, in the 20th century black cats seemed to have had a charmed streak, and appeared in many postcards as definite auguries of good luck. For my own self, I am sympathetic to witches (though not to the point of actually believing in their existence) and also of anarchism, of which the black cat has been adopted as a symbol from the late 19th century. Whatever way you look at it, black cats are cool.

Here are some postcards from the very early 20th century, say around 1905-1906. Unfortunately I cannot say who R. L. Wells is, other than noting that they have a very district style and seem to have created a wide array of postcards.

Our very own silky black beast. My camera usually has trouble focusing on his blackness, so this is a rare decent — and most recent! — photo.

And the following postcards are by the equally mysterious H. M. Rose (or is my Google-fu weak as water, today?), from 1913.

For a great selection of vintage black cat postcards, affix your peepers on this collection, among which is found this cat, my absolute favourite for its strangely human teeth and dazed expression of sorrow mixed with euphoria.

~ ds