Clocks and time

This post is linked to Maria’s Postcards for the Weekend.  If you would like to see other folk’s posts on this subject please visit Maria’s blog and follow the links.  They are always well worth viewing.

In 2015 I had clocks as my theme and there is a special blog devoted to them at Scriptor's Clock Cards.   It is impossible to picvk out just a couple as favourites so I settled for these random ones...

2655 - From Eva in Morocco.

2891 - from Katya in Ukraine.

2437 - mail art from Heleen in the Netherlands.

2294 - from Susanne in Germany- 

HAPPY NEW YEAR Everyone.

Reading

If there is one theme on postcards that I like without exception it is reading - women reading (the most common), men reading, children reading, animals reading...  Most of m,y friends are well aware of this and as a result I get quite a lot of them.  Here are just a few of the latest ones.

4267 - from Renate in Austria.

By Austrian artist Franz von Defregger (1835-1921).  And this was the super stamp on the card.

4282 - From Susanne in Germany.   By Carl Larsson (1853-1919)

4273 - Another from Susanne. The bookworm by H Fenner-Behmer.

4225 - From Eva in Morocco.  By Rene Magritte.

4239 - From Heleen in the Netherlands.  'I always stay with you' by Sjoerd Kuijper.

4252 - Owl by Jorg Block  from Susanne.

4253 - also from Susanne.

4254 - And another of Susanne's.  "Sitting nude with pillow" 1911 by  August Mackie.

4258 - Susanne -

4259 - Susanne - Findus by Sven Nordqvist.

4261 - Yet another from my German friend, Susanne.

4309 - From my generous Susanne by Rudi Herzlmeier.  I can't tell if the budgerigar is reading as well!

4319 - From Heleen in the Netherlands.  This Rembrandt card came from the Rijksmuseum.  The painting dates from 1662.

4314 - From Heleen.  Old woman reading by Gerard Dou.  This face has such character.

I have received many more but I had better leave it there for now.  I hope you enjoyed looking at them as much as I enjoyed receiving (and of course READING them).

December Holidays

Christmas is a time for celebrating and for peace but it also has its serious side and these two embroidered cards made in France and Belgium during the First World War say it all.  They were made by the local French and Belgian girls to sell to the soldiers.

This first one was from Arthur Lane to my grandmother (his aunt) for 1914/15.  “Dear Auntie, I thought you might like one of the crowd of patriotic cards that are sold out here.  Everywhere you go you come across these card: even hawkers selling them.  We are now back at ___ for Divisional Rest .  Yesterday we had a Church Parade and H.C.  This moprning we have been out practiding attacking.  Love from Arthur.”  Within a year he and two of his brothers were dead in the trenches of France.

This one - "To my dear wife from Tom xxx" said "Hoping you enjoy yourself as best you can.  I got back all safe and sound in the muck.  It's rotten here.  Ta Ta."  I don’t know whether Tom was around to celebrate Christmas the next year – I hope so.

This post is linked to Maria’s Postcards for the Weekend.  If you would like to see other folk’s posts on this subject please visit Maria’s blog and follow the links.  They are always well worth viewing.

Winter Scenes

0000 - Monca.  The first postcard I recorded after I started seriously collecting them in February 2012 was from my friend Monica in Sweden.  It was by Lennart Helje, an artist I had never come across before but who I have come to love.

4243 - Monica.  Just a few days ago I received another of Helje's winter scenes from Monica.

Lennart Helje is a Swedish painter/ illustrator, born in 1940 in Lima, who paints Christmas elves/ tomtes and animals in snowy landscapes. His fairytale artwork has been reproduced as Christmas cards, both in Sweden and internationally, by UNICEF. He has also illustrated the stamps and postal Christmas seals, with Nordic nature and plant motifs.

This post is linked to Maria’s Postcards for the Weekend.  If you would like to see other folk’s posts on this subject please visit Maria’s blog and follow the links.  They are always well worth viewing.

Lighthouse

This post is linked to Maria’s Postcards for the Weekend.  If you would like to see other folk’s posts on this subject please visit Maria’s blog and follow the links.  They are always well worth viewing.

1634 - From Christy in Texas.

The Bolivar Point Lighthouse in Texas was built in 1872 ansd in a hurrican in 1900 it sheltered 125 people. After 61 years service it was retired but remains a landmark on the Texas Gulf coast.  

This was one of the card's stamps.

Museum and Libraries

This post is linked to Maria’s Postcards for the Weekend.  If you would like to see other folk’s posts on this subject - museum/university/library - please visit Maria’s blog and follow the links.  They are always well worth viewing.

0043 - from a postcrosser

1533 - from Katya in Ukraine

1588 - From Martine in Corsica

1658 - From Irina in Bulgaria

1848 - from Danielle in Nebraska

1542 - from Susanne in Germany

4076 - From Renate in Austria who has sent me some lovely library cards over the years.

2184 - from Susanne again who has sent me some beautiful library cards

Reading and Books

This post is linked to Maria’s Postcards for the Weekend.  If you would like to see other folk’s posts on this subject please visit Maria’s blog and follow the links.  They are always well worth viewing.

Being an ex-librarian I love cards that have anything to do with books and reading.  Because my friends know this I am fortunate to get plenty of them.  I haven’t scanned any cards in recently (smacked wrist!) but here are a couple I haven’t shown before.

2891 – From Katya and Marina in Ukraine. 

They always send lovely stamps – these are Ukrainian fairy tales.

4128 – from Susanne in Germany

4166 – Also from Susanne.  This photo is by Yevgeny Anan'evich Khaldei (23 March [O.S. 10 March] 1917 – 6 October 1997).  

Khaldei was a Red Army photographer, best known for his World War II photograph of a Soviet soldier Raising a flag over the Reichstag, in Berlin, capital of the vanquished Nazi Germany.  Khaldei was born to a Jewish family in Yuzovka (now Donetsk, Ukraine) and was obsessed with photography since childhood, having built his first childhood camera with his grandmother's eyeglasses. He started working with the Soviet press agency TASS at the age of nineteen as a photographer.  His father and three of his four sisters were murdered by the Nazis during the war.

In 1945 he persuaded his uncle to create a large Soviet flag after seeing Joe Rosenthal's photo of the flag raising at Iwo Jima while the Soviet army closed in on Berlin and took it with him to Berlin for the Reichstag shot.  After the War Khaldei continued to photograph, now working as a freelance photographer for Soviet newspapers, and focused on capturing scenes of everyday life.  Khaldei's international fame dates from the 1990s, when exhibitions of his photographs began to be held in the West.  This photo is entitled “Rest”.

A Reflection

A rushed Postcard for the Weekend because I'm a bit busy at the moment.

This was from my friend Danielle in Nebraska.

Children by Elisabeth Bem

I've joined Maria's Linky of 'Postcards for The Weekend' at Connections to the World - an invitation to all postcard lovers to share their cards - this week's theme is children.   All postcard bloggers are invited to join.

Card no 1932 - from Natalia in Russia.

Elisaveta Merkuryevna Bem or Boehm or Böhm (1843–1914) was a Russian painter; a popular designer of postcards.

She was born in Saint Petersburg to a noble Russian family that had a Tartar origin.  At the age of 14 she entered the School of Painting at the Society for Promotion of Artists . In 1865 she graduated from the school with the Large Silver Medal.   She married a prominent Russian-Hungarian violinist Ludwig Boehm, professor of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.  Elisabeth painted many watercolors, illustrated children books of the Folk Library series. For her silhouettes, etchings and works of glass she received medals at the World Fairs in Chicago of 1893, Paris of 1900, Munich of 1902 and Milan of 1906 (gold medal).   She is mostly known as one of the most prominent Russian creators of postcards. She painted more than 350 postcards creating a recognisable style that depicts children's faces and silhouettes.

  Thanks Maria for hosting this Linky.

Mail and post...

I've joined Maria's Linky of 'Postcards for The Weekend' at Connections to the World - an invitation to all postcard lovers to share their cards - this week's theme is - Postal/Mail Related Items.  Next weekend's will be Children.  For details of the launch see this page on Maria's blog.  All postcard bloggers are invited to join.

4117 - from Sini in Finland.  I collected postcards as a child and still have some of those from that era.  Since it was Postcrossing that fairly recently renewed my interest in collecting postcards this seems an appropriate one to start this blog post with.

4144 - from Eva in Spain who informed me that the word 'post' in Arabic was not well written.

And this was one of its stamps - most appropriate.

4113 - from Irina in Russia - an airmail box.

4155 - from Katya and her Mum, Marina, in Ukraine.  This is Pechkin the mailman based on the book book 'Uncle Fedya, His Dog, and His Cat' by Eduard Uspensky.  Uncle Fedya or Uncle Fyodor is a very independent six year old city boy, "a boy on his own". After his mother forbids him from keeping his talking cat Matroskin, Uncle Fyodor runs away from home to live on his own. He and his friends arrive at the village Prostokvashino, where a house is provided for them. There is a lot of extra space in the house, and therefore the local dog Sharik was called to fill it; he joined them cheerfully and amicably.  Uncle Fyodor's parents became very agitated at the loss of their son, and even put out a missing persons notice in the paper … Such a notice couldn't pass the nose of the extremely curious mail carrier Pechkin, who right then and there declared his hopes to earn a reward for the boy's safe return — a new bicycle.

Thanks Maria at Connections to the World for hosting this Linky.