November 2020 Speaker
Once again due to Covid restrictions this meeting was organised as a Zoom meeting by our Chairman Maurice liaising with our speaker, James Taylor who gave us a fascinating powerpoint presentation on his collection of Picture Postcards from the 1840’s to the 1950’s.
He started collecting these postcards whilst a young lad at school and as he progressed into his teenage years his passion grew as he learnt about History and Art throughout the world in school and then continued his studies through various university courses.
James was a former curator of paintings, drawings and prints at the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich and also had links with The Russell-Coates Art Gallery in Bournemouth and many other art and naval establishments around the South Coast.
His post cards portrayed the naughty humour of the late 1800’s before we had all the communication links we have today, so posting cards and letters was the only way to be in contact with relatives and friends including telegrams also sent via the post office. Although the post cards might have been a bit naughty, they were not deliberately rude as people were allowed to decide which way they interpreted the pictures.
In 1894 the GPO let commercial companies become involved and in 1899 a standard size was set up for postcards, but they still had to have the message and address on the back of the card, so messages had to be reduced. From 1902 the back of the postcard had a separate section on the right for the name and address of the sender.
As James mentioned the use of postcard humour in the dark hours of WW1 and WW2 uplifted and entertained everyone with its wacky and persuasive humour. During the 1900’s many artists produced cartoons for children on post cards and in comics, the Mabel Lucy Attwell and Bonzo the Dog being some of the most popular. Also seaside post cards were produced in their thousands as many of us remembered our family holidays in years gone by before we started travelling abroad in later years.
Certainly a very entertaining afternoon was enjoyed by all and I hope we may invite James again to give us another of his talks in the future.