Vintage Valentine

Post Valentine

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: This one is sneaking in just under the line after Valentine’s Day. It is what I gave Kim for Valentine’s Day this year.

Some years here it is just a heartfelt card, but this year I was digging around on eBay and buying a few vintage cards which you have seen in prior posts (here and here) and this was one little prize I found. It’s a simple design, a bright red heart with this wonderful little cat attached, with silly white hearts drawn around the outer edge.

Of course the little metal cat attached to the top Stanley (the recipient of this card) had the good sense not to take it off. The poem reads:

To My Valentine
If you love me
you’ll love my CAT
And see that it’s befriended;
So if I hear you saying “Scat”
I’ll know my chance is ended.

Back of the Valentine.

The back reads, To Stanley S. From Madelaine and Dorothy Haskel (?) And we see this bit of twisted wire that sticks out the back, securing the cat charm to the front. I sort of love that two sisters sent this and I like the last name initial too – was there another Stanley in the class perhaps? Which, if either, sister did Stanley like best? Was the two sister approach to hide the real affection of one? One wonders.

Front of the keychain.

Then, I was cruising around Instagram and one of my favorite folks in Texas (@curiositiesantique or www.getcuriosities.com) put this little gem up and I grabbed it. Kim is an inveterate collector of (lucky) heads up pennies on the sidewalk and so this with a penny embedded within seemed just right for him. It is a lucky keyring which promises, Keep me and never go broke around the outer edge and, in case that wasn’t direct enough, I bring good luck at the bottom.

And the back!

The penny has a date of 1972 so we will date it to then. On the back we discover its real missive, Nick V. Caputo County Clerk Essex Vote Democrat. Turns out he was the Essex County (NJ) Clerk from 1961 to 1991. He was known as the man with the golden arm which had something to do with always drawing the Democrats for the first position on the ballot, the odds of which were 1 in 50 billion! Huh. (For those of you who are curious about this, and perhaps understand it better, you can read more in an article from the Jersey Globe here.)

Someone liked it enough to keep it all this time and it made its way down to Texas. It is back here in the tri-state area though, bringing my sweetheart luck and prosperity.

Picture Purr-fect

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: Let the Valentine’s Day and Butler Birthday season commence early here this year. We have a lot to show and share for ourselves this February.

Valentine’s and photography seem to be a natural combination when I look at vintage valentine’s. Although I generally am perusing the cats (I have posted a few past puss ones here and here), but occasionally like today, these interests align. I am a tad puzzled about photography as a sub-category of vintage valentine’s.

Of course movement in a Valentine is also desirable – I am not someone who needs elaborate movement. I might enjoy seeing those, but my space constraints make storing or displaying them untenable.

Liked this one, but decided it was a bit too fragile and large to live here at Deitch Studio.

I am perhaps not the best steward of vintage Valentines truth be told as they are a bit fragile. This one is actually zipping off to someone shortly after the writing of this – surprise! (See if you know who you are.)

Our cameraman kitty has what I think of as a press camera which…seems to produce playing cards in the suit of hearts! Clever cat! He has a nice big blue bow (that and because he is an orange tabby I have decided its a boy) and sits on a more or less matching cushion. The bow is the mechanism for the card to be “pulled out” of behind the camera.

This in the “down” position before the card is revealed!

If you want to get technical there’s maybe something a bit off about the paw holding the camera in front, a bit small. On the cushion it is inscribed, If you, my Valentine will be – you’ll hear a great big Purr from me. On the back in an adult hand it says, To Betty Jo from Jacqueline. It is also marked 10 cents in two places. There is no date, although at the bottom right corner there is a very tiny 1924 copyright date.

Mechanism, old prices and dedication on the back.

Personally, I grew up in the era of the big plastic covered box of small cards which I think may still be produced in some fashion – they were so ubiquitous that if nothing else there is probably old dead stock around. As a very small child we were set to making them out to everyone in the class which seems nicely egalitarian, although I have no particular memory about whether this was an effective solution. It took some effort, writing the card and the envelope, tucking it in. They were then put into a large bag and then distributed.

Etsy appears to reproduce reasonable facsimiles of the packages I might have had as a kid.

Over time the powers that control small children got less controlling and Valentine’s accumulated from you immediate circle of friends, occasionally widen by an ambitious classmate or, as we got older, a brave boy who took it into his head to send one. I’m not sure we ever got ourselves beyond those tiny cards – the luxury and investment of singular cards like this were not in our orbit.

In addition, there were those boxes of candied hearts with sayings. While accumulating them seemed to be the thing to do, I wasn’t an especially big fan of consuming them being more of a chocolate treat over the pure sugar approach. I believe in addition to the rather classic straightforward messages, Spangler, the current maker in a long line of producers, has kept up and now have messages about things like text me and BFF.

Available from Walmart to Amazon and beyond.

There are classic Valentine’s consumables which I embraced and still embrace. My father was always good for a classic heart shaped box of candy wrapped in lurid red cellophane. I would say when we were young it was Russell Stover, but got a bit more high end as we got older. He would also sometimes bring home something for us and I remember (and used for many years) a silver heart keychain from Tiffany. (I have the remains of it in a jewelry box.) I will likely buy one of these boxes for the office where our new digs has helped create a better sense of community around shared food treats.

Has changed very little over the years. I especially like the strawberry creams…

More Valentine’s treat posts to come – culminating of course with Kim’s picture for me which is a real wonder this year! Stay tuned as we say…

It’s a Bonzo Valentine

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Pam’s Pictorama Post: I am kicking off the Valentine’s Day season of ’22 with this somewhat unusual eBay find. This rather realistic looking black and white kit holds a very correctly rendered Bonzo dog!

The cat and Bonzo aren’t quite looking at each other and sort of look like they are from different planets. It is easy to imagine that the job was handed off from one artist to the next for the work to be completed, the two never necessarily meeting. I’ve got you for My Valentine is the sole sentiment dangling from Bonzo’s foot on a heart.

I like the designs of the paw pads on Bonzo’s feet! But that and something about his paws makes me wonder if he was rendered off of one of the stuffed toys, rather than the magazine published drawings. The design is more stylized than the drawings are. Meanwhile, Bonzo is reaching up toward kitty like a babe in arms. (I own several wonderful Bonzo toys and some past posts of those can be found here, here and even one with a stuffed version of his cat friend, Ooloo also shown below, here.)

Bonzo toy from Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

Kitty is fairly traditional for a black cat Valentine if printed a bit dark here. There are a few scars on this and a bit of white something which has gotten on it over time. On the cat’s white paw which is visible, it is marked Germany. This Valentine is unmarked on the back; there is a cardboard strip that enables this to stand, if shakily, for display.

Germany was square one for Valentines as it was the heart of the printing industry for several decades. Evidently Valentines Day as we celebrate it (as a commercial fiesta of chocolate, cards and jewelry) was introduced into Germany in the 1940’s by the American GI’s stationed there, although the printing of Valentines in Germany pre-dates WWII. Interrupted by the war it rebounds as a printing empire after and continues to reign on this front for awhile beyond. Being identified as German made carried a negative connotation after the war however and somewhat dampened enthusiasm for their Valentines.

Ooloo, Bonzo’s little known cat friend. Toy in Pams-Pictorama.com collection.

A Valentine history site informs me that the simple identification of Germany dates this card to before the 1930’s. It is not in the class of elaborate German Valentines however, which can be very three dimensional, large and made of heavy cardboard.

Studdy drawn Bonzo Valentine, not in Pictorama collection.

Meanwhile, Bonzo is no stranger to Valentine’s Day and a quick search turns up a number of variations available in addition to this one, numerous ones drawn by Studdy, but also many broad “tributes” we might say. We’ll see if some others make their way to the Pictorama collection in the future. I have a real soft spot for the stuffed toys so Bonzo fans keep an eye on Pams-Pictorama.com.