Month: July 2026

Enjoying Myself Very Much

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today is a cuddling a cat card. It isn’t really quite typical of one I would purchase (verging on the saccharin) but there was something about the atmosphere of it that made me pick it up. I am a bit of a sucker for that dramatic look I think. In studying it a bit this morning and reading the note on the back, I like to think that it was perhaps a father picking out a card to send to his wife and daughters, maybe thinking about what they would like. I sometimes wonder about this period, one so popular for sending postcards, multiple deliveries a day and often for something as small as to set a date or announce an arrival. Where were the cards purchased and was the sender considering the recipient when choosing?

Certainly cards were frequently sent from a holiday – or in this case to family members probably on holiday. But I wonder, did dad grab one from a pile of postcards at home to use? In general was there a stash of postcards for general household use the way I keep a cache of birthday and get well cards even now? Or did dad wander off and find one, perhaps at the news agent when purchasing some magazines or a paper? Did he see it and think of them? In this case I think he might have – other times where there seems to be a complete disconnect between card and subject, I think it is less likely.

This young girl and her fluffy white cat are on a velvety dark background, emerging out of it and bottom lit. There are sparkling bits on her dress made with shiny dots which are layered on (casting tiny shadows and gleaming) and the effect pops dramatically. Her curly hair is caught up in a faded red velvet ribbon (the red color picked up in the flowers on her dress), the texture of it and the shiny (but not quite garish), fabric of her green dress make her emerge out of the soft, dark space, her expression a bit beguiling. The card was made in Prussia but there is no other publication information, just a serial number on the lower left.

The cat, a fluffy white long-hair, allows her to cuddle it close while looking at the viewer – his or her eyes dotted with tiny bits of green, the same as her dress. A practiced cat holder, she has the cat’s front paws caught up in her hands though – it’s not getting away. She sports a gold bracelet and a ring on the hand we can see and she has been gently colored in with flesh tone, rosy cheeks and lips.

This card was sent to The Misses Speedays. I cannot read the name of who it was sent care of, however it went to Bleucathra Street, Keswick. It was mailed on June 20, 1912. The message reads, I am enjoying myself very much, I don’t think I will come home when you come back. Peter. A careful look at the cancellation shows it was mailed from Sunderland. Not knowing where that is, I had a quick look and it is way up in the north, just southeast of Edinburgh.

I like to think he picked the card out for them – although I am mulling that he signs Peter and not dad making me second guess my storyline. Still, perhaps his cat loving Misses Speedays have left him home with puss and perhaps other pets while they enjoy their early summer vacation, to the south of their home near the North Sea. And we can indeed imagine their pleasure in receiving it.

Weather

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I have a philosophy about summer weather in the greater New York area. It is my belief that July is always worse weather than August and therefore I generally push my vacation to August because otherwise it is spent inside clinging to air conditioning and I might as well be in the office. (Furthermore, I would say that June is just too early in the summer for vacation and too busy at this particular job as well – although the June weather was lousy this year as well.) However, during the long beachy summers of my childhood the hot, sunny days of July were a feature event, better than the cooling days of August. It was prime summer. However, every single day that it rained did seem like a crime against my vacation.

I think for the most part we on the East Coast of the United States can agree however, that thus far this year the weather has been extreme and really a bit wretched. In addition to many days of heat over 100 degrees, we are now dealing with an air inversion, a heat dome trapping the smoke from wildfires in the north and turning our days tea-colored with a vague sense of the End Days hanging about them. Meanwhile, Kim and I need to make a trip downtown and both today and tomorrow threaten additionally with downpours.

British beach holidays have long been fraught with the likelihood of rain and the population intrepid about them in spite of that. I am guessing this one, from August of 1927 was no exception. Bonzo and his pale Ooloo, huddled companionably under an umbrella. Bonzo looks like his toy counterpart a bit more than his illustration and comics self and the black cat is a bit more generic than Ooloo. (For two Ooloo posts have a look here and here.) Although I will say, I have never been sure that Ooloo had a very decided design.

Here he (she? never sure) sports a big read bow that matches the umbrella and they look at each other fondly. No one is actually holding up said umbrella – a careful look just sort of shows it floats over them. Bonzo has a paw stuck out as if checking to see if it is still raining, although it is teeming down. Little drips come off the edges of the umbrella as if to assure the viewer that it is indeed keeping them dry despite the rain pattern across the image.

Above them it says, The weather, old friend, doesn’t matter a jot; But a card for Remembrance just matters a lot. (Jot isn’t a word you see a lot, right?) It should also be noted that there is no copyright or publication information on this card, helping to confirm my suspicion that it is a total swipe.

Blackpool evidently just had this flat Felix instead of a stuffed one. Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

On the back, in pencil and as best I can tell it says, Blackpool Hello Dear, I am enjoying the last of my holidays and around Blackpool but tomorrow I leave for Liverpool and from…I’m…you. And in the top right corner, Love from P. Limson. It is addressed to Miss L. M. Horsepoof, Gedling, Nottingham. It is dated, as noted above, with a cancellation from Blackpool on August, 24, 1927 at 10:15 AM.

Pictorama readers well know that in my mind Blackpool holidays at the beach in the 1920’s were best known for having your photo taken with an over-sized Felix. (A post with a number of photos from Blackpool can be found here.) This would of course be reason enough alone for me to opt for a summer holiday there, weather notwithstanding. Instead, next weekend we decamp for our New Jersey shore digs. A few posts between now and then but we are starting to get ourselves ready.

Fishy Wain

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I tossed this into a purchase pile recently as clearly somehow these are Wain or Wain-ish cats; however I would bet dollars to donuts that Louis never saw a payday for this one. However, having said that, I cannot easily locate another version of this image online, only one other copy of this card itself.

A few posts back I discussed the history of New York postcard producer Franz Huld and much to my surprise this morning, his credit runs along the side of the front of this card, Huld’s Correspondence Series No. 23 Franz Huld, Publisher, New York. (That post of an entertaining card about the Catskills, Hanging on the Moon, can be found here.)

Meanwhile, just yesterday Pictorama had a post about another innovative early postcard maker but in Germany. I think of that one as more of a high end (photomontages and trick photography) and our US friend Huld as sort of creatively low end if you will. (I am only on my first cup of coffee today so stay with me a bit.) Huld had a much briefer run in the business and never on a huge scale of production and maybe wasn’t above a bit of image thievery. Just a thought anyway because this card looks distinctly culled from something else and does not bear the Louis Wain signature nor credit however those are Wain cats.

This card was mailed but the postmark has been torn off therefore I cannot accurate date it. If I put it roughly at 1910, Huld is coming toward the end of his several years of production but still active and in upstate New York. However, the real smoking gun is that Wain was living and working in New York from 1907-1910, but only doing newspaper work. He was producing two newspaper strips, Cats About Town and Graymalkin. There is evidently no record of him producing postcards here. So my guess is that Huld lifted this image somehow from a newspaper illustration and craftily “repurposed” it.

One of the few images I could definitely tie out to this period of New York newspaper work. I do think there is some under-valued and interesting Wain work published in newspapers. While much of it was repurposed and collected, I have definitely seen work, mostly for sale as tear sheets, that I have not seen elsewhere.

On the card we have two grainy Wain cats, one yellow fellow attacking a meal of fish – his mouth in an “O” of expectation. I like the way his paws manage to hold the implements in a logical way which I would personally find challenging if I was drawing this. The orange, grumpy, cat looks on in expectation holding a three-prong fork and knife up like he might bang on the table with them. Next to them in script it reads in neat script, This is no Fish Story. Again, while maybe in the quirky style of Wain somehow perhaps misses the mark?

Detail of a Christmas page done by Wain that I purchased and wrote about last December.

The sender of the card has underlined the above and written, No-sir-ee – Dearest Ross; How are you enjoying your vacation. I am having a fine time. Love to all, Bradley. It was mailed to Master Ross W. Guernsey, Schoharie, Scho, Co. New York. As I mentioned before, the stamp and cancellation has been torn off so no date and no point of origin for the card. (In sorting out the address a bit the internet told me that Ross W. Guernsey was a life-long resident of Schoharie, New York. I have no way of knowing if that seems true or AI just sort of winding me up.)

Our friend Mr. Huld was sadly certainly not the only one taking advantage of Louis Wain and liberating his work for his own purposes. This is perhaps though the most egregious and evident example I have run across. Still, I remain grateful for a snippet of Louis Wain I wouldn’t have seen otherwise. I intend to continue to sniff out some of this newspaper work in its original form.

Smiling Card

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Pam’s Pictorama Photo Post: This is a sort of genre of Pictorama cards – beautiful woman in a photo collage or otherwise manipulated, sometimes on the moon, but today is bubbles being blown and bubbling up from a clay pipe. (It’s a loose category but have a look here, here and here for a few others to get the idea.)

This one has the added appeal of a pampered looking kitten being held by the woman who is looking at it adoringly. (Likely a studio puss who earned his daily keep but has a natural look of feline entitlement.) She is in an absurdly befrilled hat, dripping in ribbons, lace and feathers. (One can only imagine how long before kitty wanted a go at the feathers; you’ll notice she is holding onto his paws.) She sports a gold necklace, rings and a bracelet. Even her dress seems to have feathers at the neck. Her make-up is evident, heavy lipstick and eye make-up which probably was considered a bit tarty for the day.

Somehow the illusion has been created that she is in a bubble – in fact her image in the bubble is repeated in the different size ones to make four on the card creating the illusion of bubbles floating out of the pipe. If I were to guess I would say maybe they started with a photo of a reflecting ball like you might have in a garden. (Or the witches balls I have discovered more recently that hang from the ceiling, usually in a window – to show that witch already lives there so that witches just move along – or so I am told.)

The photo is hand painted with a swath of pink on her and green and yellow around her. The smaller bubbles just get a dollop of yellow, the smallest remains in just black and white. The pipe is in black and white. It appears to be a clay pipe and I don’t know much about them. I wonder about what appears to be a hole in the bottom and how that worked with bubbles or even to smoke – but maybe it created a better flow of air somehow.

The postcard maker has a very tiny emblem in a circle also, in the lower left corner and a serial number (464/20) on the right. It is a stylized NPG which seems to stand for Neue Photographische Gesellschaft, an earlier German maker of photo postcards. Arthur Schwarz founded the company in 1894 and helped create the photo postcard boom of the 1900’s. The company was interested in technical advancements, color photos and without knowing more than this, I would say this is a good example.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection. Well, actually Deitch Studio Collection.

Without noting the maker when I posted about this, today I discover that this postcard I gave Kim for his birthday a few years ago is made by this company as well. I show it above and the post about it can be found here.

This postcard was mailed and it is postmarked April 6, 1909 from Jacksonville, Florida and mailed to a Miss Ora F. Wagner, Noblesville, Ind 170 S9h. I can’t quite read the top of her message – it might read, Peeps and then says, This is a dark and gloomy day so I am sending you a “smiling” card. Yours HOH.

Back of card.

I like the sentiment and being a bit out of sorts after a long week at work it seems appropriate and like a good shot in the arm early this Saturday morning, many decades later.

Winkin’

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Like most New Yorkers I awoke to a much cooler day today after several days or grueling and punishing heat. And this fellow was looking up at me on my desk when I got here this morning. (Envision my desk, an old drawing table someone gave me, as a living, roiling, mass of things which occasionally coughs up something from a lower stratum. One morning last week it was freakishly an early family photo of Kim’s. I don’t remember having seen it before and have absolutely no idea how that ended up in the mix.)

I purchased this card at the most recent edition of the postcard sale. You would think that it might be embossed with the very textured, woven look of the background (like the surface of an old suitcase), but it is not. This very sporty cat however, who has a hat, high (detachable?) collar and bow tie all of his day. That chapeau (more or less the same blue as his natty bowtie), is at an especially jaunty angle and sized just right for between his pointed ears.

As cat coloring goes, he is a bit nondescript. His hair is sort of a brown mix but without a distinct stripe like a tabby. He’s got a saucy look with his gaze directed, not at us, but toward someone or something to the viewer’s left. While it isn’t all the way to thuggish, his wink isn’t one of affection and I would say he’s a tough guy. (Cats blink and wink with affection and sometimes of course as they get sleepy – which being cats is much of the time.)

This card was mailed from Rotterdam on April 3, 1917 (I needed Google’s help with that) and addressed in a purpleish ink to Mej. W. H. van Etten, Oudshofstraat, Steenbergen. In the same ink and hand on the left, it appears to say something like, Jac. Pat.

So this uncredited artist could be the Netherlands answer to Louis Wain. He looks like he is up for some trouble – I can see him shooting craps or pulling a minor heist. While Wain’s cats can have that quality there is something always a bit scattered about them and there is usually a sly joke somewhere.

Back of the card.

The only identifying mark on the card is a stylized PN and the number 2501-4 on the front. While an internet search shows Postcard News as utilizing these initials, they appear to be a later, American card company.

As a kid I had a remarkable tortie named Winkie. I have probably written about her before although not that I can think of at any great length. She was my first cat soulmate, was extremely smart (arguably too smart for her own good), and had several extra toes on each front paw as well as an extra joint somehow which made her look like she was on her tip toes.

I’m sorry not to have a photo of Winkie available, but here is Cookie Fussbudget Butler.

She and my cat Otto have left me with the impression that the girl cats are smarter than the boys, although the fellows are more likely to be very affectionate. This plays out a bit with Cookie and Blackie. However, it must be said that lately Cookie has become assertively in need of attention and leaps onto the bed nightly (dramatically jumping over Kim’s pillowed head and mine), lands next to me and begins loud meowing for pets. She has always been the more vocal, chattier of the two cats and now the vocalizations are long, loud and drawn out conversations and I suppose recriminations. Cookie (aka Cookie Monster), the tuxie of the two, is quite a card.

Hanging on the Moon

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: although this is clearly a photo collage of sorts somehow on the fence about calling it a photo post today; nor is it a cat card. However, it is one of many made to entice people to the Catskills on holiday with current revelers sending word home on them. (With their funny cat images my collection of them is burgeoning. Recent posts with Catskill cat cards can be found here and here.) This is a nod to those folks who are commencing their holiday and vacation travel on this July 4 weekend. Let the summer begin!

This card was both written on and addressed but not stamped, so unclear if and how it got to its destination. At the bottom is says, Dear Ethel how is this. Iva Ott November 4, 1907. It is addressed, in a more adult hand, to Miss Ethel Sanford Kelly Coss Del Co, N.Y.

It’s a nifty card and kudos to the person who put it together. The bottom is a landscape photo of the mountains the area is known for, dotted with houses and farms. A space of white has been left and then the sky. The couple are originally from a photo although how the sky and the moon were actually made is lost to me. There is a sort of deckle edge at the bottom of this portion like it was actually carefully torn by hand for the effect wanted.

Appropriate for today! An Uncle Sam puzzle card by Huld I found online.

The couple sit close to each other, hanging off the moon, with a very long spyglass, evidently peering down at the people and places below. It is held by the woman while the man is pointing to something (or someone) specific in the landscape below. Printed at the bottom it says, Viewing Fleischmann’s, Catskill Mountains, N.Y. They seem quite jolly and content with their perch in a cat bird seat, high above the valley.

A close examination of the surface shows sort of half tone dots which means the images came from something already printed. This really is a collage of probably three images.

One section of a Puzzle card also found online.

Along one side there is the publisher’s copyright. It says No. 4003. Copyrighted 1906 by Franz Huld, Publisher, New York. An interesting article on Huld that the internet spit out can be found here. (Someone named George Miller is the author and he has done some extensive research in order to write it.) Some highlights from the article are as follow below.

His first business address appears at 170 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan in a 1900-1901 era directory and is among the first listings for postcard publishing. The author of the article describes his wares as occasionally ugly, without gilt trim or compelling pictures of children or animals. However, he was creative (as evidenced by this card) and according to the article, primarily Huld published commemorative issues, views, comics (especially “write- aways”), collector’s issues, and novelties. That makes a lot of sense skill and sensibility-wise when we consider the construction of this particular card.

The only feline postcard I found among his images.

Huld’s New York listing remains only until 1910 with a filing for bankruptcy in 1914. It is believed that Huld died in October of 1928 at age 67. The man liked a good novelty card (including some puzzle ones that were mailed in an envelope), and I recommend the article above for more information and some additional images. Clearly he was an early player in the business of postcards and a somewhat formative one.

With our temperatures still hovering around 90 after days over 100 here in New York City, we do not have any travel on our agenda here at Deitch Studio. We will be staying here in the city with air conditioning (we hope), cats and ice cream to keep us company on the country’s 250th birthday weekend.