A Month of Letters is a challenge with two parts: mail something (anything!) every day the post runs in February and respond to every letter you get.
posted by naturalog
on Feb 1, 2012 -
23 comments
A Portrait in Postcards. Twenty years after her death,
Angela Carter's literary executor and friend,
Susannah Clapp, remembers Carter through the cards she sent, "These cards make a paper trail, a zigzag path through the 80s. They are casually dispatched – some messages are barely more than a signature – but are often the more telling for that: they catch Angela on the wing, shooting her mouth off. She would have hated the idea of a soundbite, but she had a gift for a capsule phrase, for a story in a word. "
The postcard gallery.
posted by gladly
on Jan 23, 2012 -
4 comments
Babylon:
Surreal Babies "Babies hatch from eggs, bubble from cauldrons, are fished from rivers, emerge in the cabbage patch, sit atop clouds, and ride in zeppelins. They play instruments, drive automobiles, fly in balloons, harvest the fields; an anarchistic world of baby heaven. The postcards were a source of inspiration to many artists in the 1920s and '30s, in particular to both the Dadaists and the Surrealists. They were collected by Paul Éluard, André Breton, Salvador Dalí, Hannah Höch, Herbert Bayer, and Man Ray. The popular images excited inspiration in these artists because of their boundless inventiveness."
posted by puny human
on Mar 17, 2011 -
10 comments
Our True Intent Is All For Your Delight:
The John Hinde Butlin's Photographs "Long viewed only as a master of kitsch Hinde is now recognised, albeit posthumously, as a peerless social documentarian. Dazzling in their their colour intensity and strange clarity.... Visionary, Wonderful." Sean O'Hagan, The Observer, London "Extraordinary...the combination of aesthetics and promotion produced something that bypasses documentary and approaches an arresting British surrealism". David Jays, Financial Times "These phenomenal photographs...a cacophony of colour...Despite and because of their artifice, John Hinde's picture postcards are endlessly fascinating, exposing social trends, sartorial aberrations and a particular photographic vision. A delightful book". The Art Book. Large collection of his other work at the
John Hinde Collection
posted by puny human
on Jan 22, 2011 -
6 comments
Curt Teich (1877-1974) was a printer who immigrated to the United States from Germany in 1896. Curt Teich & Company, opened in 1898 in Chicago, was the world's largest printer of view and advertising postcards. Teich is best known for its "Greetings From" postcards with their big letters, vivid colors, and bold style. Flickr user amhpics has archived nearly 2000 Teich linen postcards in his set
Vintage Curt Teich linen postcards 1930s-1950s.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Nov 28, 2010 -
5 comments
He showed that the Royal Mail will deliver things as small as a bee or as large as an elephant; he once posted himself home; and he invented the self-recirculating postcard - it had two sides, each with a different address.
W Reginald Bray was a genius at
mail art and the self-proclaimed autograph king.
[more inside]
posted by Joe in Australia
on Sep 21, 2010 -
13 comments
Postcards from Berlin is a call from a Berlin (Germany) design studio for virtual postcards from all of the places in the US named Berlin.
posted by mkb
on Aug 20, 2010 -
29 comments
Postcards From Hell — For the last half-decade, the
Fund for Peace, working with Foreign Policy, has been putting together the
Failed States Index (the 2010 version is out), using a battery of indicators to determine how stable—or unstable—a country is. But as the photos here demonstrate, sometimes the best test is the simplest one: You'll only know a failed state when you see it.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jun 25, 2010 -
16 comments
The Motel in America. In a different America, where the novelty of driving cross-country and the charm of the highway strip drew droves of tourists--and their automobiles--from coast to coast in the name of exploration and recreation, motels provided a home away from home for weary travelers. While many of the great motels of the mid-twentieth century have disappeared from the national landscape, the linen postcards left behind in the
Motel Morgue can give us a glimpse into what this era of American tourism and leisure looked like.
posted by sarabeth
on Feb 7, 2009 -
24 comments
A glance will show / Why Phoebe Snow / Prefers this route / To Buffalo.
And Phoebe's right / No route is quite / As short as Road / of Anthracite.
In 1908 the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad began work on the
New Jersey Cut-Off to make its New York to Buffalo mainline (the Road of Anthracite
so liked by
Phoebe Snow) even shorter and faster. It was to have no grade crossings, and was to be as straight and level as possible — through hilly terrain. The 28-mile
Lackawanna Cut-Off, as it is now known, was built over three years, cost $11 million, and was an
engineering marvel of massive reinforced concrete bridges, enormous cuts, and the largest railroad embankment in the world. All of this has been
abandoned for years, though there are plans afoot to restore the Cut-Off for
commuter rail.
[more inside]
posted by parudox
on Dec 24, 2008 -
17 comments
A nice
set of photographic glass-plate transparencies depicting life in Japan ca. 1910. These "Yokohama photographs" were sold to foreign tourists between about 1868 and 1912. I found the
Crafts and Trades section most interesting.
posted by Rumple
on Jun 7, 2007 -
18 comments
Sexy Witch: "This is a blog about sexy witches. Here you will find witches of all types: elegant, attractive, pretty, cute, hot, naughty or femme fatales; real life witches; people dressed up as witches: for halloween or fancy dress balls; fictional witches: witches in novels, plays and poems; movie witches; cartoon witches; witches in art: carved, painted, sketched and engraved: they are all here, or will be in time." (Some Images Not Safe For Work)
posted by LeeJay
on Apr 8, 2007 -
14 comments
"
Tall-tale postcards emerged around the turn of the 20th century, when postcards came to function as surrogates for travel. People soon realized that postcards could be used to create or sustain a certain utopian myth about a town or region, and crafty photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs. Nowhere did these modified images, or "
tall-tale postcards" as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities that hoped to forge an identity as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and growth. Food sources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish — were the most common subjects."
posted by jonson
on Dec 30, 2006 -
20 comments
Benny's Postcards "is devoted to the postcards my grandfather collected from approximately 1906-1918. The collection is comprised of 435 postcards, most of which were produced in Russia, Poland and Germany." [
coral cache]
posted by strikhedonia
on Nov 3, 2005 -
5 comments
Malls of America - Gone (some of them) but not forgotten (well, maybe). Vintage photographs and postcards of malls of the 1960s and '70s. For more personal stories, check out
Deadmalls.com.
posted by deborah
on Aug 7, 2005 -
19 comments
OK, Seattleites, see the American flag
here ? On the sidewalk below is where your 3rd & Pine McDonalds now sits. Man, I can see five buildings here that are still standing, but that red brick one at the lower right got replaced
early. Now here's the
Northern Life Tower. Note how the bricks lighten towards the top, so as to make it look taller from below--very subtle, that. It's one of Seattle's two Art Deco buildings, the other being the
Exchange Building. You can cut through that one, coming off the ferry at First Avenue and take the elevator to walk out on Second Ave rather than climb that steep hill, you know.
And consider on what
playground equipment our grandparents got to play. Lucky stiffs--you can't even find a decent 50s era swing set in a park in this town anymore.
Penny Postcards From King County, from
Penny Postcards of Washington, from
Penny Postcards. Man, I loves me some vintage postcards. And if you do, too, check that last link--it's got all 50 states.
posted by y2karl
on Dec 19, 2004 -
17 comments
