Month: March 2022

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Sarawak, 1947

“Aside from a stretch of road where Pakistanis and other South Asians sold their cloth and spices, almost all of Kuching’s shops were owned and staffed by Chinese. These shops, sheltering in their semigloom behind the arcades, carried a motley mix of merchandise, from outboard motors to china bowls to cotton shirts. Sugar, rice, flour, dried fish, and beans stood in open sacks on the floor alongside pretty Suchow earthen tubs with preserved duck eggs from China. ‘The shelves groaned with bottles of beer, Chinese wine and foreign liquor, and a bewildering choice of tinned goods from all parts of the world.’ The shop assistants, and even the proprietor, usually dressed in singlets and undershorts. They would bargain briskly in any of several Chinese dialects, Bazaar Malay, or pidgin English, weigh the items on a hand-held brass scale, and write up the sale in Chinese characters on an old scrap of paper.

“Nearby, a block-long fresh food market came to life in the early morning with stands displaying every tropical fruit, from the prickly pungent durian to the fragile fragrant mangosteen as well as many imported temperate fruits and vegetables. Laid out on mats under a layer of flies were boneless hunks of water buffalo, pork, and goat. Live chickens and ducks stood tethered inside woven baskets, fresh fish lay expiring on trestle tables, and live eels swirled in tin buckets.”

— From The Most Offending Soul Alive: Tom Harrisson and his Remarkable Life (2002) by Judith M. Heimann

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Magical

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My wife once said, “For someone who hates cars, you sure love cars.” It’s true. I love cars, until they move. But they are not moving in Art Fitzpatrick & Van Kaufman by Rob Keil, one of the most wonderful and magical art books I have ever read.

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Perhaps it’s because these images from the fifties and sixties are what I once thought my adult life would be like. Perhaps it’s because I spent 38 years in advertising and design, and the creative process behind these images is explained in fascinating detail. Or maybe it’s simply because this is such a beautiful book.

60Pontiac

Most likely, it’s all of that. You can see more and hit the “Buy” button at www.fitzandvan.com. You will not be disappointed.

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Handmade Postcards

From 1901 to 1915, the world experienced a boom in postcard mailing and collecting. The New York State Library notes, “The decade between 1905-1915 – the Golden Age of Postcards – saw postcard collecting reach a zenith of staggering proportion.”

With postage costing just one penny, people embraced the postcard. Official U.S. Post Office figures for the year ending June 30, 1908, show that about 700 million postcards were mailed in the U.S.A. By 1913, the one-year total had grown to more than 900 million.

In addition to printed postcards, people were making their own “handmade” or “homemade” postcards in the early 1900s.

Handmade Trees

The A.H. Abbott & Co. of Chicago sold pre-printed cards with postcard information on one side and the other side left blank for the artist’s original art.

Handmade Missoula 1

Handmade Abbott

In 1910, the Abbott & Co. catalog included these items:

Postcard for Water Color and Pen and Ink Work.

Printed on one side; other side is blank.

“Swiss” Board: 1 Each $0.03, Doz. $0.25, Hundred $1.76

“Old Style” Board: 1 Each $0.03, Doz. $0.25, Hundred $1.76

Whatman Extra Heavy paper, medium surface: 1 Each $0.03, Doz. $0.25, Hundred $1.76

No. 282-1. Tinsel Flitter, etc., for Post Card Decoration

Tinsel Flitter, Gold, Silver, Cambric or Mixed Colors, per ounce, $0.20

Glass tubes for applying adhesive for flitter, diamond dust, etc. Each, $0.15

No. 284 White Frosting (for snow effects on cards) per ounce, $0.10

No. 285. Diamond Dust (Christmas decorations, etc.) per ounce, $0.12

Today, blank postcards, with or without the postal info, are widely available via Amazon.com and many other sites.

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 Mail art is as old as the mail, in spite of the notion that “mail art” began in the 1960s in New York City. That was “the mail art movement,” an offshoot often misidentified as mail art itself.

For hundreds more examples of early mail art see “Mail Art Before 1950.”

And for postcard history, visit these sites of the New York State Library and the Smithsonian Institution.