Alfred Mainzer

Posting About Postcards!

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today I am taking a moment to revel in my postcard purchases, but also to celebrate the postcard show itself. To anyone who has been to the current incarnation of this sale this might seem a bit extreme as it is in a small church in the West Village and made up of about nine dealers.

The first reference to this show in my life dates back to college when one of my professors, collage artist Maureen McCabe (her site here), mentioned in passing that she loved to go to a postcard show in Manhattan. She would pick up vintage cards which she would use in her collage boxes. (She mentioned getting vintage paper dolls there which I have never seen!) Frankly, in my naivete I had never heard of or considered such a thing. Antique stores and flea markets were a part of my childhood but shows of such things for sale had never really occurred to me. And postcards no less. It set my brain mulling.

The art of Maureen McCabe. “Fate and Magic”, 2013, copyright of the artist. That could be a vintage paperdoll right there…

Fast forward a number of decades and somehow or other it came to my attention that there was a vintage postcard show (the Metropolitan postcard show) at a (then) old and tatty hotel on the far west end of 57th Street. In my memory at the time it was a Howard Johnson, it appears to be called the Watson Hotel now. (Another sliver of memory is that in my 20’s my then boyfriend, Kevin, and I would get day passes just for swimming pool access in hotels in Manhattan in the hottest of summer. This was one of those somewhat cheesy hotels.)

Who would have thought a room with nothing but postcards for sale would be of so much interest? In those years there was probably twice as many dealers and maybe even some ephemera that was beyond postcards. (How big was it when Maureen went?) If memory serves there were a few people of some note signing or roaming the space. I bought fewer cards and spent most of my time and money at a high flying dealer table groaning with Louis Wain cards.

Sadly, with Covid like some many things it shutdown and although I was on their mailing list it seemed to be a number of years before I caught up with them again. Now I find them in the West Village and reduced in size.

Oddly, for me it is perhaps a bit more manageable and I seem to come away with increasingly large scores and yesterday proves the point. It was a miserably rainy day which may have depressed attendance although business seemed reasonably brisk to me. Kim was with me and settled into a pile of photos of early actors and actresses and even made a few purchases and you will probably see those over time too.

View while digging through a box labeled “Cat”.

Today’s card was purchased by me early in the show as I made my way through each dealer; it is Mainzer at his best. I have written about Mainzer before (which can be read here and here) who is sort of the later heir to the Louis Wain throne. Mainzer, as a card producer, picks up that ball in 1938 and runs with it, arguably until at least 2005 when taking the reprints of the cards into consideration. Prior to 1955 the production address was 118 East 28th Street here in New York. (On a whim I did a Google Search on the address and it is worth a look, the Kaime Arcade building with a very interesting facade.) After 1955 it is just noted as Long Island City and that is what is printed on this card. Eugen Hartung was the artist.

While mama cat, dressed for a day of shopping with stockinged legs, heels, hat, gloves and fur trimmed coat, chooses between two postcards, her offspring are tearing the place apart – including I might add, her poodle on a leash! In case you are wondering, yes, each of the postcards has a tiny cat drawing on it. (The other prints on the walls appear to be flowers however.) Allow me to note some oddities about the store. It seems to stock not only postcards, prints and fancy wrap boxes, but oddly globes adorn the shelf too. Cut off at the top seem to be some written labels I cannot quite make out and appear to be written in Hartung’s native Swiss German.

Another view of inside the church where the Metropolitan Postcard show now resides several times a year.

The well appointed shopkeepers are both in a uniform dress with matching necklaces. While the one with glasses focuses on Mrs. Cat, the other tries to contend with the kits. She has come running with a pen in hand, clearly interrupted in her clerical duties. The kittens, two boys and a girl, are well turned out but unlike mom and the salespeople do not wear shoes – bare paws all the better to climb with. Each magically has their tail come out from their clothing – including the little girls whose pantaloons we see. Mom’s tail, and that of the saleslady, appear from under their overclothes. (I’m always curious about how tails are worked into anthropomorphic cats.)

Several kinds of cat are represented for variety – Mrs. Cat is a tabby, the boys a tabby and a tuxie, little girls is a marmalade. The saleswomen are marmalade and lastly an odd mix like maybe she has some Siamese in her. One final curi-oddity is that the pooch, having opened the cabinet below, has released two large mice. No one, even the dog, is paying any attention to their escape. A pleasant mayhem is enjoyed by all.

Back of card – how did it find its way back to the US I wonder.

Someone has penned card b at the bottom right. An addition mystery about this card is the back which shows that this was evidently mailed to Japan from an indeterminate place in 1976 and has, obviously, made its way back to the United States to ultimately be sold to me. It says in a neat childish scrawl, Dear Jacob, the school is very good and close. all the children are kind to me. I am learning and getting better. I will see you in camp. Nathan. It was sent to: Jacob G. Cohen, 1-32-28 Ebisu-nishi, Shibuya-Ku, Tokyo, 150 Japan. (And for your information, a postcard to Japan in 1976 cost twenty-one cents.)

Lastly (because I have clearly droned on a bit) may I just say that curiously this store reminds me very much of one I used to go to in New Jersey, near the house we now have. I cannot remember the name but was a true old fashioned stationary store and carried not only cards and assorted writing materials, but the more esoteric things a stationary store carried before the internet, such as form contracts like leases, which is what my mother used to go there for. It was long and narrow with windows all along one side. There were similar blond cabinets and perhaps more of a dusty business-like feel but something about this card nags at my brain with that memory. It is sadly now a Dunkin’ Donuts, just a few feet from the post office and grocery store we walk to frequently.

So there you have it – the postcard show and our first edition of the acquisitions.

More Mainzer

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Today’s postcard post is devoted to the heir to the Louis Wain wacky anthropomorphic cat throne, Eugen Hartung. Hartung is sort of the Otto Messmer of cat postcards. Hartung is a Swiss artist (1897-1973) whose career blossomed in the United States after WWII somehow became know by his publisher’s name, Alfred Mainzer. Was it post-war anti-German sentiment? Was it conscious like Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer, or did it happen of it’s own accord? For whatever reason, Mainzer’s name is the one prominent on the back of these cards it is the name I knew them by until I started digging a bit for a blog awhile back. I wrote about one of these cards I purchased back in 2019 and recounted some of this history. (That post can be found here.)

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection

Much to my surprise, two handfuls of these cards found their way to me back in December. After retrieving a mysterious package that had been left for you in the parlance of our doorman’s communications, I discovered that a friend who lives on the other end of 86th Street (and who I haven’t seen in person given our pandemic times) had dropped off a packet of these cards for me. Evidently she had found them years ago when cleaning out her parent’s house and put them aside for me. In a recent apartment renovation she discovered them again and brought them over. When I emailed my thanks she said that she remembered thinking when she found them that I was the right home for them and she was glad she had finally united them with me.

Oddly enough though within the month, another handful of these cards showed up in a Christmas card for Kim. I want to say it was either Rick Altergott or Evan Dent who sent them along. I apologize for this slip of mind and not remembering better. I was struck by how odd it was that two bunches of these cards should find their way to me at the same time. If you’re reading please raise your hand so I can correct this and thank you properly!

These cards were still widely available when I was a little kid and I always liked them – purchasing them when I could although those particular ones are long disappeared. They have a texture to the paper, that I remember with tactile memory, and the deckle edge lives in memory too, somehow rooted in the 1960’s in my mind. It turns out that, on the other side of the country, a young adult Kim Deitch was purchasing them in Berkeley. All great minds think alike it seems. Little did either of us know that decades later Deitch Studio and Pam’s Pictorama would unite to be the blissful cat laden bower that it is today.

I have long wondered why, although extremely popular, Hartung’s cat cards have never risen to the level of Louis Wain. (I have written several times about the cat artist genius and some of those posts can be found here, here and here just for starters.) I think in part, although plenty chaotic and wacky, they lack the underlying maniacal frenzy of the Wain universe. They are beautifully choreographed compositions and there is a prettiness that Wain’s drawings don’t have. As Louis Wain himself began to descend into mental illness, the drawings had an increasing edge to them – until of course they become almost entirely abstract. At least this is my theory. Even at their most frenzied they are a bit polite and well bred in a way that Wain isn’t.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection

I give you a selection of a two of my favorites out of the group, more to come. This Western scene above – a cat cowboy evidently breaking a bucking bronco goat – was a evidently a much beloved one. It has multiple push pin holes in the top edge where someone kept it on view. (None of these cards in either bunch were ever mailed.) A girl cat is using a home movie camera (circa the 1950’s or ’60’s) to film the action and she’s right in the midst of it, tail politely poking out beneath a short skirt. In the top right, one cowboy pushes another off his perch on the rails and a Siamese cat is amongst them for diversity. I once owned an Annie Oakley jacket like the one worn by the fleeing fellow in the lower right – was my favorite jacket for years and I wore it until it fell to pieces.

Pams-Pictorama.com Collection.

The next one is this family scene of kitty chaos. I think it is very funny that these cats are dog owners and it is the dogs that are causing today’s troubles. The cats are exceedingly genteel and the cafe scene is decidedly European. The spilled drinks appear to be hot chocolate (the children were drinking it) and the waiter’s spilling tray is full of petit fours. (The one young fellow, strategically under the tray, is preparing to snatch them up as they fall.)

Comically, two birds watch the action from the lower right – none of these well-bred felines pays them any mind. The cats are civilized and all the others are playing their animal roles. This card is heavily faded along the very top edge, but only a persnickety collector would have issue with this. It too has many pin prick holes, top and bottom, from being on view somewhere.

I end today by saying I would expect that at least a few more of these will find their way to the pages of Pictorama so cat card lovers stay tuned.

Everybody into the Pool!

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Pam’s Pictorama Postcard Post: Kicking off this 1st of June post with a kitty fantasy worthy of my Jersey shore childhood, although this seems to be more of a mountain lake scene than the Atlantic ocean of my youth. These swimming felines sport an interesting array of swimming costumes that cross clothing periods – while one bikini is prominent, some “men” wear old-fashioned one pieces from earlier in the 20th century, as does a female kitty climbing up a diving ladder further back. A few wear swim caps – keeping their kitty coiffures intact?

Referred to sometimes as Mainzer Cats, this card is part of a large series of postcards produced by the Alfred Mainzer company of Long Island City, New York. (A local business with Long Island City being just across the East River from where I sit right this moment.) The company was in business from the 1940’s through the 1960’s, however the artist responsible for these cards was a Swiss artist, Eugen Hartung (or Hurtong) (1897-1973), who executed the series. So the moniker Mainzer Cats seems a bit unfair in retrospect – these are actually Hartung kitties.

Clearly the artistic and spiritual descendent of Louis Wain, (who I have written about on many occasions including here  and here for starters), Hartung picked up the whacky feline artistic baton of depicting anthropomorphic cats; his felines generally clad in human togs and portrayed in a variety of settings and situations – sometimes when minor disaster is about to strike, although this one doesn’t seem to show anything more serious than a raft tipping over. He is a bit less boffo than Wain and I gather he employed other animals in images as well – dogs, mice and even hedgehogs.

Kim claims to have had a number of these cards pinned up on the wall of his 1970’s Bay area abode and thinks some may linger in the depths of his files. (Um, are you holding out on your wife Mr. Deitch?) This card is the first to enter the Pictorama collection although I have a tugging memory that maybe I also owned a few as a child.

As for cats and water – I have known some more fond of it than others, but none that were interested in full body immersion, swimsuit notwithstanding. I have however known one or two to sit under a dripping faucet now and again – sometimes to drink from, but occasionally just for the bit of drip, drip, drip on their head. My cat Otto was prone to getting a bit too curious about a full tub of water which sometimes ended badly when she took an unintentional dunking now and again. I have had several cats who were committed to being in the bathroom when I showered – scratching at the door insistently if excluded – and more than one that discovered the space between the shower curtain and liner as an exciting cat shower experience perch, I guess not unlike the excitement going through the car wash as a child.