Mystery car

Does anyone know what the make of this car is ? The back of the postcard is blank and the printing is in English and then French. There are no details of the publisher either. If you have any ideas please let me know.

Saint Catherine

I couldn’t understand why we’d collected so many Saint Catherine cards. They were addressed to girls with lots of different names, but not Catherine!. My favourite English student who is a retired history and geography teacher (history and geography are taught together in France) was able to explain the tradition. There are several St. Catherines on the French calendar, but one in particular in the autumn is the patron Saint of unmarried maidens. This is why lots of young girls used to send cards to each other on the celebrated day. Today, I think it would be hard to find a St Catherine card to send.

This one is a ‘semi modern’ card sent between friends.

Thank you Peter

This is a Swiss card for Peter at Worldman to thank him for writing about this blog in such a lovely way. I know that he comes from Montreux in Switzerland and this one is from Flüelen (Fluela). Now I think I know where the St. Bernard's dogs come from!

This card is semi modern and was posted in 1954. There is a franking on the back: Europäische Fernsehwochen television?

A walk in the woods

I thought that this weekend we could all go back in time to 1903 and take a walk through the woods. I think we’ll all manage to sit together on the bench where we can talk about all of our different countries. Which way should we go next left or right?

Charruyer Park

This is the park in La Rochelle, it hasn’t really changed at all. I’ve been looking through some postcards of the park and there often appear to be the same pair of swans. Today we have black swans too. The park was left to the town by Madame Charruyer about 150 years ago. The ‘lungs’ of La Rochelle, it stretches for a length of 2 kilometres through the middle of town.

Tweedledum and Tweedledee

While I was clearing out an album we’d bought, I came across some photos. I bet these two were hot in their fur coats. This one has a postcard back. When I was small my mum had photos taken of my sister, brother and me every year by a ‘mobile’ photographer. A lot of those photos had postcard backs too, and it wasn’t so long ago!

I think the album had been kept by a young lady called Francine. Someone wrote to her at the end of the thirties saying that they hoped she would soon be a bride as she was now old enough and they had heard rumour of a young man. I found some cards from ‘the young man’ who was a soldier. They stopped shortly after the war started. There weren’t any more cards from young men after that. I hope that Francine found someone after the war.

La Rochelle Ladies

These ladies are typical of the women who worked along the shore at the beginning of the 20th century. There lives would have been very hard. The climate is cold, damp and very windy in winter and the summer sun is very hot. Throughout history the women of La Rochelle have been special, The first was Eleanor Of Aquitaine who owned la Rochelle, she married the King of France and later the King of England. I’m sure that the women of La Rochelle would have played a courageous part in the sieges where many Rochelais lost their lives. The women of La Rochelle were also amongst the most determined passengers to the Americas.

Later on, some of the ladies of La Rochelle were to become famous amongst sailors and ships crews from all over the world….

Auction success!

We went and bought a lot of new stock at an auction yesterday afternoon. There were other items, the most unusual being the sale of a binocular collection. There were posters too, this is where you can read about them. I always try to keep very still during an auction, I’m terrified of accidentally bidding for something I don’t want. Rob asked me to keep a running total of our bids so that we didn’t overspend, it went so fast I could hardly keep up!

This is just one card from a set that was in an album. We don’t usually bother much with fantasy cards, but I like these. It was printed in Berlin and sent in 1905 to wish someone a Happy New Year.

Mayday

For the month of May a Mayday card. In France the tradition is to give a bunch of Lily-of-the-Valley for luck on May 1st. This year the flowers came from Germany, as the hot weather had caused the French Lily-of-the-Valley to flower too early.

This card carried bad news, the sender’s house had been burgled and she was sleeping badly because of it.

The Sugar Loaf

This is a card from very early in the 20th century. I presume that the sugar loaf was a memorial of some sort. I’ve not been able to find out much about it. All I found was a later card for sale on eBay. There were no people in charming clothes and telegraph poles had been erected. My card is better!

I was pleased to see a comment from Alec Millard of Cherryland Postcards. He’s got a lovely postcard site with very different cards to mine. He’s chosen the same blogger background as me - a man of taste.

"I won't forget you"

I’m sorry I’ve been absent for such a long time. I‘ve been busy setting up our postcard business which means lots of paper work as well as preparing the cards for eBay (this is the door to our eBay). I’ve also had a lot more writing to do – strange how everything comes at the same time.

This card was sent in 1910 and was part of correspondence between friends made at someone’s wedding. An invitation to pass a Sunday together…

Death of a gangster

Now this one is a very interesting postcard. Here you see the French police carrying away the still alive body of the notorious Jules Bonnot. He met his end on April 28th 1912, after a shootout. The house he was hiding in had been surrounded by 500 police officers, soldiers, fireman, military engineers and a lynch mob. After firing for sometime the powers that be decided to dynamite the building, Bonnot was badly wounded and the police shot him 10 times in the upper body and once in the head. HE WAS STILL ALIVE when they removed him from the building (see card), the lynch mob was told that he was already dead.

What had he done to deserve such an end? He was a member of the notorious Bonnot Gang a band of anarchists who make Bonnie and Clyde look like angels. They were also the very first gang to use a getaway car! I got all of this information from Wikipedia so if you’d like to read the story in depth read Jules Bonnot and the Bonnot Gang.

More of Easter

These three were produced for Easter. Slightly newer than the previous card, I was pleased to find the set while sorting through a pile of postcards. Though they have stamps and are franked they were never sent through the post. I wonder if some collectors bought their cards and took them sraight to the post office to be made 'official'. Unfortunately I can't read the year.

If you would like to see them in more detail just click in the image.

Easter

This is a card which was sent in March 1904 and is a typical Easter card of the time. Cards at the very beginning of the 20th century had just the place for an address on the back. A message of any sort on that side was forbidden. Lots of older cards have space on the front to include a message.

Poisson d'avril!

In France the 1st of April is April fish day. The same idea as April fools day and if you’ve got children young enough, you’re likely to have the drawing of a fish pinned to your back. I think that one of the scenes in the film ‘ The French Connection’ showed the police sorting though a load of smelly fish looking for drugs, the gangster's idea of a poisson d’avril joke.

Henry sent this card to his nephew in 1916, it was written in pencil and must have been sent in an envelope. He was looking forward to seeing his nephew the following Sunday, perhaps he had some leave coming up?

Husband knows best (!)

I was intending to put this card with the last one when I read on closer inspection 'correction maritale', not at all the same. This was from a church at Bourg. Fortunately, women have come a long way since those days

Mother knows best

I was going through an album of postcards that we bought at auction. Most of them were from cathedrals and châteaux which are fairly common and not really worth mentioning, but I was amused to find this one. It was from the château at Blois and sent in the 1920s. I imagine that the photographers in those days would have had to have been pretty agile, there were no zoom lenses so if they thought they had an interesting photo they would have to climb up to get it.

The Ice Man

I thought I’d better post this one before everyone forgets what ice is. The postcard is around 100 years old. I know from reports on TV that there is less and less ice in the Chamonix region of France, as with a lot of places in the world.

(I didn't realise that I was reducing the cards so much before uploading them. From now on if you click on them they will be larger and easier to see.)

The fisherman

I saved this picture some time ago. I can smell the sea when I look at this one. On closer inspection he looks really healthy and strong. A good advertisment for eating fish.

The Hermit

The Abbé Fouré (1839-1910) worked for 25 years of his life sculpting the most amazing figures into the rock. He became deaf and dumb after an illness. I hope to go one day to the north of France to see what remains of his work.