In honour of our newly released photo postcards, time to learn a little about postcards.

The image below is of a postcard from the 1870’s.

To some this may look like a piece of a brown paper bag. It is plain, washed of colour, there is no picture and the ink is brown. The main reason for this blandness is because postcards were never actually about self-expression, visual or verbal. They were intended as a cheap way to a non-confidential message. Interestingly, when picture-postcards eventually did appear on the market, legal issues were immediately raised as to what images printed on them were considered appropriate. A postcard image in one country for example was not always considered appropriate in the destination country or in the country it needed to pass through.

Some images such as those relating to the Islamic prophet Muhammad for example, were banned from being sent in 1900 by the Ottoman Empire. And apparently ‘banned’ post cards such as these that managed to be sent before 1900 are now considered to be valuable to collectors.

So all you collectors out there get checking