Directory A

Librarie Abajoli, Izmir, Turkey

• Librarie Abajoli, Smyrne

The Abajoli family ran the biggest stationery and book store (librarie in French) in Izmir until the 1970s. Izmir, formerly Smyrna, is the second largest port in Turkey and the third largest city of the country by the number of inhabitants. It is located on the Aegean Sea near the Gulf of Izmir. Its inhabitants are Smyrnaeans.

Source: Once Upon A Time Izmir Smyrne On Postcards

N. J. Abbott & Son,

Berkeley, California, USA

• N. J. Abbott & Son, Publishers

Nellie J. Abbott, (1858 to 31 July 1918) book and stationery store owner, 2124 Center St, Berkeley. Mrs. Abbott was born in Mission San Carlos at El Carmello, Monterey County. She was the daughter of Captain William Byrnes, an officer of the California Rangers and the man who killed the Murrieta bandit of California during the early days. Her son, Clyde E. Abbott (born 1875) was active in political circles and helped his mother run her stationery store. Between 1900 and 1912, he was known as the Democratic party boss in the area. The business was close to the University of California and their German-made postcards reflected this. In 1907 the business copyrighted Bill the Dog Man, presumably to do with James Willard Henderson, a celebrity chef in the student world. After a good many years in the stationery business Mrs Abbott latterly conducted an Indian curio store.

Hans Abel, Oslo, Norway.

• H. Abel, Christiana.

Hans Holterman Abel (17 October 17 1830 to 11 December 1903), 20 Kongengsgade, Christiana was a photographer and photographic equipment shop established in 1864.

A pharmacy manager in 1853, Abel became interested in photography in 1863 and went to Germany to be trained by Ludwig Gustav Kleffel (1807 to 1885). There he met Kleffel’s daughter Louise, also a trained photographer, and married her the following year. Later in 1864, the couple returned to Norway and opened a photographic studio and supplies business in Hoppes Gaard at Torvet in the centre of Christiania. Louise Abel ran the studio while her husband took care of the sales in photographic chemicals and equipment. She also produced Christmas cards to compete with poor quality prints from abroad. In 1867 the studio was the first in Norway to produce portraits in cabinet form. Louise used the L. Abel label.

The Abels ran the studio until 1890 when they sold to Sine Kraft, another early woman photographer, who had worked there since 1882. The Art Publishing House and the chemical business were taken over by sons Gustav Adolf Abel (1872 to 1936) and Louis Gustav Kleffel Abel (1874 to 1932).

The Abels published local topographicals as early as 1899. In the divided-back era, they traded as a stock-based company (A/S – aaktieselskab) and published artwork of Norwegian painter and sculptor Axel Ender (14 September 1853 to 10 September 1920) .

Abelardo, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

• Colleccione de “La linda”⁴. (Photografias de Abelardo)

Abelardo Rodríguez Urdaneta, Santo Domingo, (24 June 1870 to 1933) Dominican Republic. Painter, sculptor, artistic photographer, poet and musician, he also excelled in drawing. Abelardo is considered the father of Dominican sculpture. Indeed, in his recent Historical Dictionary of the Dominican Republic⁵Eric Paul Roordab says Abelardo was the most influential artist of the early 20^th century. His magnificent sculptures adorn a number of places in Santo Domingo. In 1898 his photo of Arthur B. Pellerano Alfau was published, the first photograph published in a Dominican magazine. From 1901 he worked in his photographic studio and cultural centre in Santo Domingo which was visited by prominent politicians and artists⁶. In 1908 he opened his drawing, painting and sculpture academy, which he directed until his death⁷.

Abdullah Brothers, Istanbul

The Abdullah Brothers were a group of three Ottoman brothers of Armenian descent, Viçen Abdullahyan (1820 to 1902), Hovsep Abdullahyan (1830 to 1908), and Kevork Abdullahyan (1839 to 1918), who were photographers of international fame during the late Ottoman Empire. They took pictures of scenic views and notable individuals, including Sultans. Most of their photography was of the Ottoman Empire. Many pictures were published as postcards by Max Fruchtermann (qv), the leading publisher of the day.

In 1863, Sultan Abdulaziz declared the Abdullah Frères as the official court photographers and Outstanding Artists of the City, an epithet they used until the closure of the shop in 1899.

Source: wikipedia

Friedrich Adolf Ackermann

Munich, Germany

• Fr. A Ackermanns Kunstverlag¹¹, Munchen
• F. A. Ackermann, Kunstverlag Munchen.

In 1806 Bavaria became a kingdom with Munich as royal capital and residence. On 17 May that year, the Munich Municipal Authorities granted booksellers’ rights to Ernst August Fleischmann, who dealt in books and paintings. In the late autumn of 1864 Friedrich Adolf Ackermann joined the company and undertook the expansion of the art trade and book trade sectors. In 1872 he took over the book trade under the firm Friedrich Adolf Ackermanns Kunstverlag¹². This firm published books and postcards, many the latter of composers and other cultural ikons. Their Kunstlerpostkarte series included work by Professor Luigi Bechi (qv). The business is still going strong¹³.

Philipp Adam, Munich

• P L ADAM’S VERLAG, MUNCHEN

Philipp Ludwig Adam (11 March 1813 to 23 March 1893) publisher and bookshop owner. Born in Ulm, Adam studied philosophy and law from 1831 to 1835 and obtained a doctorate. He then worked as a lawyer. From 1841 he was the owner of Stettin’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung in Ulm as a bookseller and publisher. Adam founded and led the Danube Steamship Company in Ulm. Adam was heavily involved in civic life in Ulm, including the gymnastic club, the Association for Art and Antiquity in Ulm and Upper Swabia⁹ which he helped found in 1841 and the National Constitutional Association. After bankruptcy in 1875 in the wake of the collapse of the Württemberg Commissionsbank, Adam moved to Munich in 1876, where, in 1879, he became owner of a directory publishers¹⁰. After his death there, the business published coloured picture cards promoting Schreiber’s Hotels in Rigi Kulm.

The Advergraph Press,

San Francisco, USA

• The Advergraph Press, 1463 Steiner Street, San Francisco, Cal

The Advergraph Press published cards of San Francisco in Ruins showing the effects of the 1906 earthquake and a Pictorial Booklet of the same name and the words The Spirit of ’06. This consisted of 9 leaves printed both sides in a continuous strip folded accordion-style and glued into covers.

Samuel Basch, president of the Basch Auction Company, lived at 1463 Steiner in 1907¹⁴ and he was still there when his home was ransacked by burglars in 1910¹⁵. Sadly, it is just speculation that he was behind the cards but there is no other trace of the Advergraph Press.

Affleck’s Drug Store,

Washington, DC, USA

• Affleck’s Drug Store, Publishers, Washington, D.C. (Germany)

Affleck’s Drug Store, Publishers, 1429 or 1529 Pennsylvania Ave¹⁶, Washington, D.C. Originally Acker and Affleck, Philip J Affleck junior of Berryville, Virginia acquired his partner’s interest in the store in 1900 and traded after that under his own name¹⁷. An advertisement in 1914 also lists branches at 904 G Street NW, 9th and D Streets NW and the corner of 15^th and F Street underneath the old Rhodes Tavern where British soldiers drank after burning the White House, later to become the National Press Club in 1909¹⁸.

AG für Kunstdruck,

Niedersedlitz by Dresden, Germany

• A.G. f. KUNSTDRUCK, DRESDEN – NIEDERSEDLITZ

Joint Stock Company¹⁹ for Art Print, Niedersedlitz by Dresden, formerly Willner & Pick. Engaged in the manufacture and distribution of graphic products – printed advertising materials, posters, calendars, postcards, brochures, catalogue envelopes, folding cartons, sales boxes, window boxes, packaging of all kinds²⁰. Their undivided-backs featured the artwork of the landscape painter and lithographer Karl Biese.

Pierre Agopian, Alexandria, Egypt

• Made for Pierre Agopian, Alexandria, Egypt

Pierre Agopian, cigarette manufacturer, Rue Sesostris, Alexandria, Egypt. Like Vafiadis & Company in Port-Said, Armenian Agopian was principally in the tobacco business. Postcards were presumably a sideline or promotional effort. Agopian published photocards of the people and places of Alexandria and artistic depictions of ancient Egypt. He also commissioned cards of the front page of a local news paper with a photograph of a local scene bursting out from an embossed opening.

Emilio Aickelin, Venice, Italy

• E. Aickelin, Edit. – Venezia F. Noretti

Emilio Aickelin, artists’ materials shop on Via 22 Marzo, Venice. Aickelin was originally from Württemberg in southern Germany. He and his wife, Berta, fell in love with Venice on their honeymoon and subsequently settled there, opening a shop selling articles for artists. Aickelin’s wife continued the business, which became a meeting place for artists, including Emma Ciardi and Alessandro Milessi. Aickelin was one of two artists’ suppliers listed in Venice in John Murray’s Handbook for Travellers in Northern Italy in 1897. Among the artists known to have used materials from Aickelin were Claude Monet and John Singer Sargent. Monet designed an advertisement for Aickelin’s shop.

L. Aimerito & Company,

Turin, Piedmont, Italy

• Editori L. Aimerito e Co, Via Roma 13, Torino

L. Aimerito & Company, 13 Via Roma, Turin, published local topographicals into the divided-back era. Aimerito Brothers had a factory in Turin.

This card: The monument to the Traforo del Frejus is a monumental fountain located in the piazza Statuto in Turin.  The monument is dedicated to the Frejus tunnel.  The Fréjus Rail Tunnel (also called Mont Cenis Tunnel) is a rail tunnel of 13.7 km (8.5 miles) length in the European Alps, carrying the Turin–Modane railway through Mont Cenis to an end-on connection with the Culoz–Modane railway and linking Bardonecchia in Italy to Modane in France. Its mean altitude is 1,123 m and it passes beneath the Pointe du Fréjus (2,932 m) and the Col du Fréjus (2,542 m).

The monument was designed by Marcello Conte Panissera de Vegliò and was inaugurated in 1879. It consists of a pyramid made of large rocks from the tunnel excavation. The pyramid is crowned by a winged genius, which is actually a representation of Lucifer, as it carries a morning star on the forehead, along the pyramid are the marble figures of the dead Titans. 

All this is an allegory of the triumph of reason over brute force, in the positivist spirit of the time in which it was made. However, in popular tradition, this original meaning is superimposed on another: the monument commemorates the suffering of the miners from the time they carried out the work. At the base of the pyramid, there is a fountain containing fish and other aquatic animals. This fountain is one of the few monuments dedicated to the fallen angel and the combination with a rail tunnel must be unique.

Source: Arquitectura por año

The Albany News Company

Albany, NY, USA

• The Albany News Company, Albany, N.Y., Leipzig, Dresden.
• 

The Albany News Company, booksellers, newsdealers and stationers, 508-510 Broadway, Albany was established in 1881. In 1896, the company was advertising everything new in the reading world. The latest books by the most popular authors; the leading periodicals, domestic and foreign. School and College text books.

Stationery for the Office, Books for the Library, Magazines for the Home, Papers for Everybody. EVERYTHING IN SPORTING GOODS NECESSARY for Base Ball Players, Tennis Players, Croquet Players, Bicycle Riders. SUBSCRIPTIONS RECEIVED FOR ALL PERIODICALS, AMERICAN OR FOREIGN. We receive new books as published. Any book in print secured. Foreign books imported.

The Albany Directory for the year 1898.

In 1900 the company petitioned Congress against a bill which it described as detrimental to news dealers. The company published topographical photo-cards of New York state and as far away as Pennsylvania. By the undivided-back era, the company was part of the American News Company (above).

Not to be confused with: Crain & Sons’ Albany News Company in Georgia

Joseph Albert, Durbuy, Belgium

• Jos. Albert, Durbuy

Joseph Albert was a hotelier in Durbuy, a Walloon city and municipality in the Belgian province of Luxembourg. In 1912 and into WWI he was the red cross first-aider with the Durbuy fire unit. He seems later to have been Joseph Albert-Detroz. He published local topographical photocards and packets of ten photocards in photoplastifix. His brother Charles Albert was municipal councillor there in 1907, alderman in 1908, mayor from 1911 to 1923 and secretary of the commune from 1923 to 1945.

This card: Mrs Brown was attending the Paris Exposition of 1900 and staying at the Hotel Burgundy. The Hôtel Burgundy, 8 Rue Duphot, opened in 1850. Anglomania was the rage and Burgundy may have been picked to appeal to clients from Victorian England who were flocking to Paris. Wealthy travellers from France and Europe often stayed for several months. The Madeleine neighbourhood was one of the liveliest in town with theatres, cafés, food and luxury stores. Hotel Burgundy guests included the aristocracy of the Second Empire and other celebrities such as poet Charles Baudelaire after whom the restaurant has been named in the 5-star boutique establishment of the present day.

G Nino Albertieri,

Bordighera, Imperia, Liguria, Italy

• G Nino Albertieri, pianos et musique, edit Bordighera

Gaetano Nino Albertieri, dealer in musical instruments, via L. Cadorna, Bordighera. Albertieri led a tango-rumba orchestra. In 1895 he published the score of the waltz Over the waves by Juventino Rosas. His postcards of the Bordighera area extended into the divided-back period. In 1912 Nino Albertieri was one of three friends who built the Teatro Pietro Zeni on ground in Piazza Mazzini in Bordighera in honour of their friend tenor Pietro Zeni²¹.

The Albertype Company,

Brooklyn, New York

• THE ALBERTYPE CO. BROOKLYN, N.Y. in the stamp box
• THE ALBERTYPE CO. BROOKLYN, N.Y. in the stamp box FISCHER DRUG CO.
• THE ALBERTYPE CO. BROOKLYN, N.Y. in the stamp box COPYRIGHT 1906 A.J.F. FISCHER DRUG CO.

The Albertype Company was a Brooklyn-based publisher founded in 1890 by brothers Adolph and Herman Wittemann. The company, originally known as Wittemann Brothers, operated to 1952 and produced over 25,000 prints. Albertype Company produced their own photographs, as well as reproducing photographic images produced by other companies and individual photographers. The company published postcards and viewbooks²². The company utilized a photo-mechanical process that had been invented by Joseph Albert in Australia in the late 1860s. Albert’s process was an improvement on the collotype photographic process. The company had teams of photographers who travelled across the United States taking and buying images depicting people, places, and activities in all parts of the country. The images were published as postcards and marketed to be sold in the locales depicted in the images²³.

Rudolf Albrecht

Rothenburg on the Tauber, Bavaria, Germany.

• Kunstanstalt Albrecht. Rothenburg o. T.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a town in the Franconia region. It is well known for its well-preserved medieval old town, a destination for tourists from around the world. Today it is one of only three towns in Germany that still have completely intact city walls.

Rothenburg was a Free imperial city from the late Middle Ages to 1803. The Albrechts of Rothenburg ob der Tauber were a patrician family, many of whose members occupied administrative offices in both the Interior and Exterior Councils that governed the Imperial Free City of Rothenburg ob der Tauber during the second half of the Holy Roman Empire. In addition to performing various judicial, religious and administrative roles in their home city, several Albrechts also wrote University theses that contributed, in the wider context of defining German national identity, to Law and Legal Theory during the years that spanned the Protestant Reformation, the Thirty Years War, the war’s aftermath, and the German Enlightenment.

Rudolf Albrecht was a bookseller and art publishing firm in Rothenburg. In 1904 Albrecht’s Guide to Rothenburg was sold in English translation and by 1910 the German version was in its fifth edition.

In 1905 Albrecht reprinted Rothenburger Chronik by Johann David Wilhelm Von Winterbach. At the start of the book, just after the table of contents, Albrecht inserted two images of Rothenburg city seals the authenticity of which have been challenged by historians.

An Ecclesiastical Gothic iron weight-driven domestic iron clock with hour striking in the British Museum is a complete fake, thought to have been made by Albrecht. In 1908 he published a book (Die Räder-Uhr) where a number of such spurious medieval clocks are illustrated.

Sources: Early Rothenburg City Seals as an Indicator for the Rising Influence of the Rothenburg City Council in the 13th and 14th Centuries MARKUS NASER; British Museum

Albrecht & Meister, Berlin

• A. & M. B.
• Albrecht & Meister, Berlin

Albrecht & Meister of Berlin were fine-quality book and lithographic printers²⁴ founded about 1869. Around 1900, they were at 14 Courbièrestrasse, Berlin and they later had depots in London, Paris and New York. Some of their undivided-backs were imported to the UK by Misch & Stock (qv) who overprinted them with their own name. They became a limited company with effect from 1 January 1904 after which they also used the logo Amag, an acronym of Albrecht & Meister AG. At the beginning of 1905 they acquired a luxury paper factory²⁵. In September 1909 Albrecht & Meister took over Aristophot AG who published real photo cards²⁶. Misch & Stock in London (qv) published their cards in their own name.

James Alderton & Company, London

• J.A. & Co.

James Alderton & Company, 2 Pond Place, Fulham Road, London, SW were primarily picture frame makers who published early postcards as a sideline. In 1903 they published two series, each of six cards, of cartoons by the sporting artist Finch Mason (qv).

Source: Picture Postcards and their Publishers Anthony Byatt 1978 Golden Age Postcard Books page 27

Aleina and Nicodeme, Jerusalem

• ALEINA et NICODEME, édit., Jérusalem
• ALBINA et NICODEME, édit., Jérusalem

ALEINA and NICODEME, Jerusalem. The sign for the Jerusalem shop of F. Nicodeme offered Photographs by Bonfils²⁸, Curiosities of the East, Other articles for the use of Travellers. A sign on bigger premises advertised Maison de Nouvautes Photograph & Photochromes. Palestinian pianists and composers François Nicodeme (born 15 August 1935) and his younger brother William were the sons of a trader in the Old City of Jerusalem who loved music and played the organ in churches in the Old City and hoped that one of his sons would become a musician²⁹.

Remigio Alejandre,

Mahón, Minorca, France

• Remigio Alejandre.-Mahón

In the first decades of twentieth century Remigio Alejandre was the leading publisher of post cards in Minorca. Many of his cards featured the work of leading local photographer Terrés Ginard Joseph³⁰.

Ernst Aletter

Bad Nauheim, Hesse, Germany

• Verlag von Ernst Aletter, Bad Nauheim. KUNSTANSTALT LOUIS GLASER, LEIPZIG

Ernst Aletter, book and paper store owner and photographer, corner of Furstenstrasse and Carlstrasse, Bad Nauheim. In 1882 Aletter bought Jacob Bensheimer’s bookshop in Mannheim. By 1893 he was in business in Bad Nauheim in succession to Gerda Kratzsch. However, he continued in Mannheim and published a book of humorous poems in the Mannheimer (Palatinate) dialect in 1896. In 1897 Aletter gave up his membership of the Mannheim Association for Natural History.

Aletter published local topographicals in the pre-postcard era and a photograph commemorating a new spa well discovered in Bad Nauheim on 7 March 1900. He published local topographical photo-cards into the divided-back era.

Vittorio Alinari, Italy

• Fot. Alinari.
• Esposizione Concorso Alinari 1902³¹

Vittorio Alinari (1859 to 1932) was an Italian photographer. His father, Leopoldo Alinari, founded a photographic company in 1854 and his brothers, Giuseppe and Romualdo, soon became partners in the firm, which was known for its speciality of documenting masterpieces of art and architectural views of Italian landmarks. In 1892 Vittorio took over the firm and shifted the emphasis to Italian documentary photography. His work is known for careful composition, frequent use of frontal perspective, and the large plate (approximately 21cm x 27cm) format he used until the 1920s. In 1900 he published an illustrated edition of Dante’s Divina Commedia, recruiting prominent contemporary artists for the illustrations.

The Alinari family are an essential reference point in the history of Italian photography. In at least 1900 and 1902, Vittorio ran a photographic competition for which he published catalogues and cards reproducing work of artist Angiolo Lemmi. Today Alinari is the guardian of a photographic corpus which has few equals (with a catalogue of over 5,500,000 pictures, historical and contemporary, ranging from vintage prints, glass plate negatives to film and fotocolours), and is responsible for a continuing program of exhibitions and publishing³⁴.

Sources: Photography between art and history, the Bulletin of the Italian Photographic Society, 1889-1914; wikipedia

This card: The Mausoleum of Theodoric is an ancient monument just outside Ravenna, Italy. It was built in 520 AD by Theodoric the Great, an Ostrogoth, as his future tomb. Source: wikipedia

T & G Allan, Newcastle, England

• T. & G. Allan’s Series

Local brothers Thomas and George Allan started T & G Allan in 1858 with their first store on Collingwood Street in Newcastle. The store was initially a newsagent, stationers and bookseller but, before long, new departments including gifts, pens and greeting cards were introduced and new stores were opened. By June 2015, the company had become The Pen Shop and was Europe’s biggest luxury pen retailer. Nearly 150 jobs were saved when directors bought the firm from the Allan family. Many of their postcards were fine un-numbered black and white photographs of Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

Source: Chroniclelive;

Peter Alstrup, Copenhagen

• flower and the initials PA logo³⁷.

Peter Alstrup Art Publishing³⁸ was a Danish card manufacturer, which mainly produced postcards. The factory was originally founded in Fredericia in south-eastern Jutland by Arnold Melchior³⁹. Photographer Peter Alstrup took over on bankruptcy and moved to Copenhagen, also opening a branch in Oslo. The factory closed after Peter Alstrup’s death in 1925. During his lifetime, Alstrup published up to 10,000 different postcards with Danish motifs, at least judging by the numbering of postcards, of which at least 9,000 numbers are known⁴⁰.

Virgilio Alterocca, Terni⁴¹, Italy

• ALTEROCCA-TERNI
• Alterocca Terni
• Alterocca Terni (fot. Brogi)
• Alterocca Terni (fot. Alinari)
• Alterocca-Terni (da P. Tremolada)

Virgilio Alterocca (1853 to 1910) was an Italian entrepreneur who published the first Italian scene picture postcard – featuring Marmore Falls. He was in his time a teacher, publisher, politician in the Socialist Party and, in 1902/03, Councillor for Education in the municipality of Terni,⁴² a city in the southern portion of the Region of Umbria in central Italy. Alterocca also published many film star postcards during the 1910s and later had success with pin-up postcards. He published cards of topographical photographs by Giacomo Brogi (qv) and Pietro Tremolada of Monza (qv).

This card: Pietro Vannucci (1446 to 1524) was a painter of the Umbrian School, whose style found an influence in classic expression of the High Renaissance.

Luigia Alzetta, Zanco’s widow, Venice

• Dep⁴³. Luigia Alzetta Ved. Zanco
• Dep. Luigia ved. Zanco.
• Ed. Luigia ved. Zanco.

Luigia Alzetta, widow of Sebastiano Zanco, owned a book store and publishing house at various locations in Venice in the early twentieth century⁴⁴. In 1889 Sebastiano published Histoire de VENISE by E. Sergent in French and Guide book to the royal Gallery of Venice : with historical and critical notes by Antonio Della Rovere (Printed By M. Fontana). Their son Eugenio Zanco, a haberdasher born in Venice on 28 October 1879 is listed in the Venice call-up register as exempted by reason of being the first born son of a widow⁴⁵. In 1907 Luigia published VENEZIA guida illustrata⁴⁶ by A De Carlo in Italian and French editions. Libreria Zanco was still in business in 1920⁴⁷.

Undivided-back photocards of Venice were also published with the wording G.Z. Editore – Venezia It seems quite a coincidence if this was not part of the Zanco enterprise but it is difficult to make a clear link.

American Art Works

West Haven, Conn, USA

• AMERICAN ART WORKS, WEST HAVEN, CONN

In 1901 in Coshocton, OH, the Tuscarora Advertising Company and Standard Advertising Company merged to become Meek and Beach. In 1908 they change the name to The American Art Works. AAW became the best-known tray manufacturers thanks to its popular Coca-Cola trays. AAW made at least 24 different full-sized Coke trays and vast numbers of advertising novelties. In 1926 the American Art Works produced 72 million pieces between advertising trays, signs, thermometers, calendars, and other various advertising pieces.

Wehle Brewing Company, West Haven, Connecticut was a customer of American Art Works of Coshocton and commissioned brewing paraphenalia including trays.

So who was American Art Works of West Haven, Connecticut? Their divided-backs included floral images in Perfumed Satin 3 designs for 30 cents and The Flag of Our Country Forever. Raphael Tuck and Sons and Bosselman produced cards for them.

Source: Breweriana Aficionado

This card: Minute Man, Concord, Massachussetts. In 1871, the Town of Concord appropriated $1,000 and asked 21-year-old Dan French to design a monument for the west side of the North Bridge. French was showing promise as a sculptor, but he had yet to create a work of such importance. French’s clay model was cast in plaster and sent to the Ames Foundry in Chicopee, Massachusetts, to be cast in bronze from melted-down Civil War cannon. The Minute Man was unveiled at the centennial celebration of April 1875, with President Ulysses S. Grant, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Ralph Waldo Emerson in attendance.
Source: Concord Museum

American News Company, New York

• The American News Company, New York Leipzig and Dresden.
• American News Company, New York, Leipzig, Berlin often with three-leaf ANC NY clover logo
• The American News Company Milan Berlin New York Dresden with three-leaf ANC NY clover logo in a circle above ITALY
• American News Company, New York, Leipzig, Berlin with three-leaf ANC NY clover logo surmounted by POLYCHROME banner
• The American News Company, New York, Leipzig, Berlin and Dresden with three-leaf ANC NY clover logo surmounted by LITHO-CHROME banner
• three-leaf ANC NY clover logo surmounted by EXCELSIOR banner and over LEIPZIG DRESDEN BERLIN
• 

American News Company 119 Nassau Street, New York, was a magazine, newspaper, book, and comic book distribution company founded in 1864 by Sinclair Tousey (1815 to 1887). Tousey was a wholesale bookseller and popular newspaper columnist, who wrote fervent editorials in favour of the abolition of slavery⁴⁸. ANC dominated the distribution market in the last quarter of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. The company’s abrupt demise in 1957 caused a huge shake-up in the publishing industry, forcing many magazine, comic book, and paperback publishers out of business⁴⁹. As well as distributing postcards, the company seems to have published and printed postcards and served as an intermediary for the publishing of postcards for smaller publishers. Most of the postcards were printed in Germany before the First World War and thereafter in America and France. The New England News Company (qv) the Albany News Company and the Rhode Island News Co were subsidiaries. Among the affiliates during the first two decades of the twentieth century was William Ritchie & Sons, Ltd. (qv)⁵⁰. Metro Postcard have a useful guide to their Excelsior series⁵¹. Another card here.

This card: Castle Clinton is a circular sandstone fort now located in Battery Park, in Manhattan, New York City. Built from 1808 to 1811, it was the first U.S. immigration station (predating Ellis Island), where more than 8 million people arrived in the United States from 1855 to 1890. Over its active life, it has also functioned as a beer garden, exhibition hall, theatre and public aquarium.
The New York Aquarium, the oldest continually operating aquarium in the United States, was founded at Castle Clinton (then Castle Garden) in 1896, and moved to Coney Island in 1957.  Castle Clinton National Monument was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966. A major rehabilitation took place in the 1970s, and Castle Clinton reopened in 1975. It has largely been restored to its original appearance and serves as a departure point for visitors to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.

American Pearl Manufacturing Company

• American Pearl Mfg Co, Phila & New York

American Pearl Manufacturing Company. 1900 and 1908 Philadelphia city directories indicate the following entries for this company:

1900 (Morris Rosin) novelty, 214 New

1908 (Rosin & Co.), novelties, 125 S. 2nd⁵²

Mr Rosin and the company also featured in the journal American Medicine in 1905. In February 1906 the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent newspaper reported that Mr. Morris Rosin, of 2142 Gratz Avenue, sailed on the steamer Bluecher for Hamburg Thursday, to be gone several months, visiting the principal cities of Europe.

American Post Card Company,

New York.

• American Post Card Co., New York. O.K. Series

The American Post Card Company were early into postcards; their 1871 correspondence card was only one of three accepted by the US Commissioner of Patents on 4 June 1872 – About one hundred applications have been rejected⁵³. Their OK Series of numbered topographical photo-cards were made in Germany and extended down eastern USA as far as Georgia. They published cards at least into the 1980s (albeit not from New York it seems) suggesting that they are one of the few to have achieved a century of postcard publishing.

American Souvenir Card Company

• AMERICAN SOUVENIR CARD CO.

American Souvenir Card Company, 127 Duane Street, New York. In 1897 the Company published a large group of picture postcards of a wide range of subjects. It is said to be the largest number published by one company during the pioneer period. The main subgroups include eleven sets of twelve cards of views of Washington, Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City. Although at least thirty sets of scenic views were planned, the company went out of business in 1898 with only fifteen sets being completed. Some of the remainders are known to have been purchased by Edward H. Mitchell(qv)⁵⁴. The reverse has American Souvenir Card. “PICTOGRAPHIC” TRADE MARK REGISTERED.

Johan Filibert Amonn

Bolzano, South Tyrol, Italy

• Joh. F. Amonn, Bozen. Photo-Lila
• J. F. A. B. M. 10

When this card was produced, Bozen was part of the Austrian Empire, an important city in the Hapsburg County of Tyrol. After WWI, and the division of Tyrol, it became Bolzano.

In 1802 Johann Jakob Amonn opened a general store in today’s Piazza Municipio, Bozen. In 1836 Johann Carl took over from his father Jacob. In 1849 the company was named JF AMONN, the name of Johann Filibert Amonn, Carl’s son, a name that is still in use. The business published local topographical photocards into the divided-back era. In 1913 the letterhead offered office equipment with an illustration of an Adler typewriter and boasted its own electrically powered modern book printing house.

The business has been handed down from father to son for seven generations. Each generation opened up new business areas; Industrial production started in 1921 and, in 1924, the first paint shop was opened in Via dei Bottai. In the 1930s Amonn acquired equipment for the mass production of postcards. Today the JF Amonn Spa also includes a hotel design company.

Source: il postalista

Carl Andelfinger & Company, Munich

• C. Andelfinger & Cie, Kunstanstalt, Munchen
• C. Andelfinger & Cie, Kunstanstalt, Munchen Original von C. Ruf, Hofphotograph, Freiburg i/B.
• CA & Co logo

Carl Andelfinger & Company, printers and art publishers, 59 Landwehrstrasse Munich. The company were at two addresses in Munich’s Ludwigsvorstadt before World War I: in 1899 the company were at Landwehrstrasse and by 1906 had moved several hundred metres south to 24 Lindwurmstrasse.

Andelfinger produced art prints and artistic post cards including a series of wild animals by the German artist F. Perlberg (1848 to 1921). They also traded on a wealth of related material and office supplies and stationery. Contemporary adverts mention advertising material and posters, artistic prints, restaurant menus, programmes, brochures, business cards. Methods included typography, colour and halftone collotype, halftone lithography and photogravure (héliogravure), as well as embossing.

Andelfinger’s production methods allowed them to exploit the speed and flexibility of their production processes. In 1899 Andelfinger advertised:

“We produce postcards in real photographs with self-portraits or pictures of relatives, of one’s own house, of occasional photographs, etc., in the best imaginable execution and within a few days of each picture sent in against the previous one, submission of the amount or against cash on delivery. You only need to send a picture (photograph, painting, drawing) and state the number of cards you want.”

The business was wound up in 2011.

Source:s Jutta Assel | Georg Jäger Vorstudien und Dokumente zu einer Geschichte der Bildpostkarte bis 1933; The Middle East Philatelic Bulletin Autumn 2018

This card: This is a difficult translation from Bayrisch (Bavarian dialect) on account of the word play, but the meaning appears to be two friends saying something like “we stick together and you can address us as one”. Loosely translated the verse could also read: “We are what we are and you put it in writing”. It’s a typical Bavarian phrase. It is also seen as: “Mia san mia und schreibm uns uns”.

Source: Stein Collectors Library

O. Anders

• O. ANDERS

O. Anders, artist and cartoonist. Anders painted children and animals – notably for Raphael Tuck. E W Savory of Bristol published his Good Old Days series. Hunting cartoons featured in a series for AS of W (qv) Henry Moss & Co (qv) published animal pictures in the divided-back era.

James Anderson

• DA FOT ANDERSON – ROMA

James Anderson (1813 to 1877) was an English photographer working mainly in Rome. Anderson was born into a family of farmers in the village of Blencarn, Cumbria and his real name was Isaac Atkinson⁵⁵. For several years, the two most successful photographers in Rome were UK expatriates, Anderson and his Scottish counterpart, Robert Macpherson. In November 1855, Anderson became one of the first photographers to explore lunar photography, and captured images of the moon through a Merz telescope at the Roman College. Though initially attracted to the artistic attributes of photography, Anderson was also a shrewd businessman who was among the first to recognize the commercial aspects of the medium and established himself as the most commercially successful photographer in Rome⁵⁶. His son Domenico Anderson (1854 to 1938) was a photographer too, and he took over the business after his father’s death. Domenico’s sons Alessandro and Giorgio continued his work until 1963, when the whole Anderson archive was bought by the Fratelli Alinari (above)⁵⁷.

A. W. Andrée, Junior,

Colombo, Sri Lanka

• A. W. Andrée, Ceylon

A. W. Andrée senior was in government service from 1858-65. From 1861 to 1865 he was a signaller with the Telegraph Department, Galle. He left to establish a photographic business. He had studios at: 32 Pedlar Street, Colombo in about 1866 to 72; Prince’s Gate, Colombo in about 1874; 42 Cross Street, Pettah, Colombo in about 1876 to 1878 and Dam Street, Small Pass, Colombo from about 1880 onwards.

A.W. Andrée junior joined the established ferrotype studio in Chatham Street, Colombo in 1887. He then set up a studio at his residence in Norris Road (while also working for the Colombo branch of the Bank of India). He married in 1893 and opened the Hopetoun Studio, Slave Island, with his brother Bertie as assistant. The firm won medals and diplomas at the Paris Exhibition in 1900 and the World’s Fair in 1904. Bertie worked for Platé and Co in 1919⁵⁸. My card has a monochrome photograph of a temple in Kandy and was postally used in 1902.

Johan Olof Andreen

Gothenburg, Sweden

• Imp. Joh. Ol. Andreens Konstforlag, Goteborg

Johan Olof Andreen (born 1847) trader and art publisher, 45 Södra Hamngatan, Gothenburg. Andreen published undivided-back photocards of Gothenburg. Andreen lived at 11 Stora Nygatan.

José Anjo,

St. John’s, Antigua, West Indies

• José Anjo, Photo Studio, St. John’s, Antigua, W.I.

José Anjo, Photographer, St. John’s, Antigua. José Anjo was for many years the Portuguese Consul in Antigua. In 1897 he was advertising postcards in the Antigua Standard whilst based in the High Street, St Johns, Antigua. In 1899 he photographed hurricane damage in the Leeward Islands for the acting Governor and in 1899, 1900 and 1901 he made photographic visits to Dominica. No doubt it was the fruits of these efforts with which he illustrated Dr. H. A. Alford Nicholls’s book Dominica, Illustrated and Described which Anjo published in about 1905. In 1903 Anjo was appointed agent for Rochester Optical and Camera Company. In 1905 his premises and 15 years’ worth of negatives were destroyed in a fire at 31 High Street, but despite this he continued trading from Anthony Anjo’s The People’s Grocery. He was possibly bankrupt by 1907 as there was a public auction of his assets, but had resumed photographic work by 1913⁵⁹. His undivided-backs also featured St Kitts.

T. & R. Annan & Sons

Glasgow, Scotland

• ANNAN

Originally from Dairsie in Fife, Thomas Annan  (1829 to 1887) moved to Glasgow as an apprentice engraver, and became friendly with a trainee chemist called George Berwick. They set up business together in 1855 as photographers. Berwick soon left to pursue a medical career. In 1857 the firm moved to premises in Sauchiehall Street. A lot of business at that time came from photographing country houses and mansions around Glasgow and photographing paintings whilst at the houses. General landscape views were photographed then sold as individual prints bound into albums. In 1859 a works was opened at Hamilton. At this time Thomas Annan lived next door to David Livingstone and the explorer’s sisters, and took a well-known portrait of him. He also took a series of images documenting the new Glasgow Water Work Scheme including a view of Queen Victoria at the Official opening. In 1868 The City of Glasgow Improvement Trust approached Thomas Annan to take pictures of some of the slum areas prior to demolition. This is claimed to be one of the first times photography was used as documentary evidence. Exposure times in some cases were measured in minutes.

Thomas’s sons James and John joined the business. James became friendly with the famous Glasgow architect, Charles Rennie Mackintosh and took the definitive portrait of him with his distinctive “floppy bow tie” as well as many contemporary images of his works. The firm was the official photographers for the Glasgow Exhibitions of 1888, 1901, and 1911 and were awarded a Royal Warrant as Photographers and Photographic Engravers by Queen Victoria. The firm continued to take photographs of Glasgow depicting the tramcars and various street scenes and buildings.

Douglas Annan is the fifth generation of the family to be involved in the firm.

This card is one of a series produced from shots of Provand’s Lordship in Glasgow in 1929 – long after the undivided-back era. Not all of them had the Annan name on them. Provand’s Lordship was built in 1471. It is one of only four surviving medieval buildings in Glasgow.

Source: Annan Photographs

Archaeological Photographic Works of India

Delhi and Shimla

• “The Arch. Photo – Works of India.”

Jadu Kissen, landscape photographer, was associated for a time with the Archaeological Survey of India. The Survey was established in 1861 and, now under the Ministry of Culture, describes itself as the premier organization for the archaeological researches and protection of the cultural heritage of the nation, It is a source of information related to excavations, conservations, museums, and epigraphical studies.

Kissen’s Archaeological Photographic Works of India, Cashmere Gate, Delhi, was originally archaeological photographer to the Government of Punjab. They published many archaeologically-themed postcards. In 1912 they had an office in Simla and Kissen’s photographs were used to illustrate the 1904 book Simla : Past And Present by Edward I Buck.

Source: Paper Jewels Postcards from the Raj

This card: The fourth bridge (Zaeine Kadal/Zaina Kadal) in Srinagar, a 92 yard bridge was constructed in 6 years by Zain-ul-Abidin (1420 to 74) in 1427. Srinagar is the largest city and the summer capital of Jammu and Kashmir, India The city lies along the banks of the Jhelum River at an elevation of 5,200 feet (1,600 metres) in the Vale of Kashmir.

It was a typical wooden bridge of cantilever design and was aimed at being used as a market place as well. The most important permanent bridge built on Jhelum was the Zaina Kadal bridge supervised by the city prefect Kanch Damara who controlled the internal administration of the city.

This bridge was dismantled and reconstructed by Partap Singh in 1897 and again a new bridge was constructed by Hari Singh in 1926, which was repaired in 1953-54 by the NC government.

Source: Kadal Nama: A brief history of historical connectors by Khawar Khan Achakzai

A. Arévalo, Tangiers, Morocco

• Libreria de A. Arévalo – Tanger (Marruecos).

Antonio Arévalo, bookseller, Tangiers, a Spanish publisher of postcards in Tangiers and Tetouan, cities in northern Morocco. Much of his output was the ethnographic portraiture much sought after by the editors of postcards of the early twentieth century. Some postcards are colorised and some bear the wording Libreria Espanola y Extranjera, Tangier⁶⁰. Arevalo was the father of the Arabist Rafael Arevalo⁶¹. He published into the divided-back era.

This card: An odalisque was a slave in a harem in the Ottoman Empire . She was an assistant or apprentice to the concubines and wives of the Ottoman sultan; later she could rise in status, that is, become a concubine or, with luck, a wife. Most odalisks were part of the imperial harem, that is, the sultan’s household.

Morocco used a well-organised system of internal Sherifien mail, and all international mail was carried out by foreign postal systems under contract. This led to a large number of competing offices in the main towns (especially the ports) run by Germany, France, Spain, and the UK. At first the British post offices were run by the Gibraltar postmistress with, it was said, a formidable rule of iron as if the huge country was a sort of sub-office of Gibraltar. The first stamps were therefore Gibraltar stamps simply overprinted “Morocco Agencies” (1898) and retained their Spanish currency.

When control of the Moroccan agency was transferred from Gibraltar to London the overprinted Gibraltar stamps were replaced by British stamps with a Spanish currency overprint in 1907. Source: GB Overprints Society

Argus Publishing Group,

Cape Town, South Africa

• “Argus Series”

In 1857 the Argus Publishing Group launched the Cape Argus newspaper, which was the first afternoon daily in Cape Town. In 1876 it was joined by the Cape Times as a morning daily to satisfy the growing demand for newspapers in the city. Equivalents like The Mercury, and The Daily News were launched in Durban to cater for the growing cluster of English speaking immigrants in the Durban region. The launch of weekend supplements like the Weekend Argus in Cape Town and the Sunday Tribune in Durban, added to the flourishing print business of the Argus Group⁶².

Confusingly, the Argus Company of South Africa based in Cape Town and Johannesburg also published postcards. They published newspapers from 1891 but none of them were called Argus ⁶³.

This card: Cecil Rhodes (1853 to1902) is buried in the Matoppo Hills, Zimbabwe. Rhodes, a British businessman and mining magnate, served as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.

Amid an immense throng of soldiers, civilians, and natives, the body of Cecil Rhodes was to-day committed to its rock tomb in the Matoppo Hills. The coffin was shrouded in a union jack and the wreath sent by Queen Alexandra was laid upon it as it was lowered into the grave.

New York Times 11 April 1902

Aristophot AG

Taucha Bez. Leipzig, Germany

• Artistophot Co., Taucha, Saxony & New York.
• A above L monogram
• A above L monogram Lychnogravure (Photogravure)

Aristophot AG. was founded on 1 August 1902 by Otto Lienekampf, Taucha⁶⁵ Bez⁶⁶., Leipzig, becoming a limited liability company from 2 November 1902. Branches of Aristophot A.-G. followed in Berlin and, by the purchase of the Photo-Aktien-Gesellschaft in Bachgaden, near Zurich. Aristophot were very significant publishers of artist and view postcards, art prints and stereoscopes and operated a major photographic development business. The book and lithographic printing press specialised in quality catalogues and pictures. The photographic technical facilities – such as reproductions on low-sensitivity photographic papers which have been exposed, developed, washed and dried by a purely mechanical means – were entirely novel and based on their own patents. They used the brand name Lychnogravure to describe real photo postcards that were hand-coloured with an opaque paint. In 1909 Aristophot was taken over by the luxury paper factory Albrecht & Meister (above)⁶⁷.

For a different monogram of A bisected by L, found in the corner of the photographs of Italian cards, see unsolved.

Armanino Brothers, Genoa, Italy

• STAB⁶⁸. ARMANINO, GENOVA
• Stab. Armanino, Genova
• Lit. Armanino – Genova
• Stab. Fratelli Armanino – Genova

Nicolo Armanino, printer in Genoa from 1843, was married to Adele Gibelli and they had at least two sons, Adolfo (May 1855 to 1928) and Henry. Nicolo died in 1866 and company was then run by his widow and these two sons. In 1880 the two brothers expanded their activities and the company moved from the Via Garibaldi to the Via Varese. With new machinery they specialized in lithographic and collotype printing. The company produced a variety of print work. Most famous were their series of postcard-size prints with images of all the Popes. Henry left the company by 1882 because of health problems. Between 1892 and 1912 the company had over 400 employees. By that time they had already started the production of playing cards too. In 1895 Adolfo was elected to the municipal council of Genoa⁶⁹. They printed my cards of paintings of Naples for Ettore Ragozino (qv) and of Genoa for Benzo Brothers (qv) of Cassina.

Benoit Arnaud, Lyon & Paris, France

• B. ARNAUD. – LYON-PARIS

Benoît Arnaud founded his lithography workshop in 1856 at the rue des Capucins in Lyon. The business was a great success and moved to Saint-Nizier place in Lyon and took off in the 1880s. From 1866, with Rodolphe, his nephew, Arnaud exported worldwide and achieved the highest awards in the world exhibitions of 1872, 1888, 1894 in Lyon, 1895 and 1900. They specialized in commercial prints: luxurious flyers, calligraphy and illuminated letterheads, and worked for the biggest brands of the time and for hotels around the world. Perhaps unsurprisingly, my topographical card printed by them has elaborate advertising connected to the Paris 1900 Exposition. In 1898 the printing press settled in Villeurbanne northeast of Lyon. At the beginning of the century, by which time they had opened premises at 56 rue de Turbigo in Paris, up to 300 people were employed. In 1903, on the death of Benoît Arnaud, Rodolphe took the management of the company and developed the fiduciary printing. In the period between the wars, they produced banknotes for banks in France and Poland and became one of the largest French printers in this field. Meantime, they added cardboard production. In 1984, the business merged with three other companies and became the Rhodanian Printing and Cartonnage Company (CRIC). In 1990, the company closed its doors in Villeurbanne and the last vestige of this printing house disappeared in 1996⁷⁰.

R G Arnold

Market Drayton, Shropshire, England

• Arnold, Market Drayton

Richard George Arnold, (1849 to 1919) portrait and landscape photographer of Stafford Street, Market Drayton. In business from 1870, Arnold’s cartes de cabinets offered enlargements to life size and frames made to order. His cartes de visites included exterior shots as well as the more conventional portraits. He also photographed pets and local events and exhibited in the seventeenth Annual Exhibition of the Photographic Society of London in 1872. He was still at work during WWI.

Source: British photo history

Arougheti Bros, Suez, Egypt

• Printed for Arougheti Bros Suez
• Made for Arougheti Bros Suez

Arougheti (later Arougheti, Suez & Alexandrie) published views of Suez. During the second half of the nineteenth-century, there was a small Jewish population in Suez which, according to an Egyptian scholar consisted of 49 Jews of whom 21 were money-lenders. Later official censuses give precise and detailed information about the Jewish population and its vicissitudes. Apparently, when the Canal was built and the town connected to the railway system, Jews were attracted to it, as they were to other urban settlements along the Canal. They earned their living from trade and tourism; a few also sold spirits, owned taverns or even lived off prostitutes. The census results show the decline in their numbers – 1897: 120; 1907: 74; 1917: 15⁷¹

Arthur & Company, York, England

• Arthur & Co., York

James W Arthur, stationer and music shop keeper, Davygate, York. In 1891 Arthur inherited a stationer’s shop at 27 Davygate his father Thomas had established in 1874 and a music shop at 20 Davygate, a few months before the latter was wrecked by fire⁷². Arthur pioneered picture postcards in York and published the first picture postcard of York in 1893. He was also a singer, musician, printer, and a carnival organiser. The work of William Hayes, the famous Victorian York photographic artist was turned into Arthur postcards⁷³. Arthur published local topographicals into the divided-back era when he had cards produced in Belgium. In about 1907, Arthur published cards of a series of watercolour paintings of York scenes by his brother-in-law, local artist Edwin Ridsdale Tate⁷⁴.

The Artistic Post Card Company, Algeciras, Spain

• The Artistic Post Card Co

The Artistic Post Card Co, Algeciras published photocards of Gibraltar and southern Spain.

Art Litho Company,

San Francisco, USA

• ART LITHO CO., PUBLISHER, SAN FRANCISCO

Art Litho Company published numbered west coast topographicals, coloured images in a cloud.

Edward H Mitchell produced, or distributed, cards for the Art Litho Company . The address side of their cards are the same.

Source: Edward H. MITCHELL DETROIT Connection;

This card: Have you forgotten, love, so soon? is a line from the song A Summer Night by English composer Arthur Goring Thomas who died tragically early in 1892.

Yukon is the smallest and westernmost of Canada’s three territories, meeting the entire eastern border of Alaska. It is the least populated province or territory in Canada, with a population of 35,874 people as of the 2016 Census.

The Whitehorse rapids were rapids on the Yukon Rivernamed for their supposed resemblance to the mane of a charging white horse. The rapids formed where the Yukon River flows across and cuts down through lava flows of the Miles Canyon basalt. These rapids presented a major navigational obstacle on the Yukon River during the Klondike Gold Rush, and lent their name to the nearby settlement of Whitehorse. The Whitehorse Dam, constructed in 1957 to 1958, submerged the rapids beneath the newly created Schwatka Lake. Today, Whitehorse is the territorial capital, Yukon’s only city and the largest settlement in any of the three territories.

This card was posted in Ketchikan, Alaska on 27 May 1904 and reached Manchester in England via the New York Foreign Branch.

Ketchikan Creek served as a summer fish camp for Tlingit natives for untold years before the town was established by Mike Martin in 1885. He was sent to the area by an Oregon canning company to assess prospects. He established the saltery Clark & Martin and a general store with Nova Scotia native George Clark, who had been foreman at a cannery that burned down.

Source: wikipedia

Art Postcard Company

Philadelphia, PA

• ART POSTCARD CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA.
• ART POST CARD CO., PHILADELPHIA, PA

This company was at Box 529, Philadelphia. They published local topographical photocards in the undivided-back era with a superb quality of photograph. Sometimes referred to as Pennsylvania Art Post Card Co but this term wasn’t on the cards.

Not to be confused with: The Photo and Art Post Card Co., 95 Washington street, Chicago, The Art Post Card Co.. Auburn. Maine, American Art Postcard Co, Boston, Massachusetts etc etc

This card: The use of the word postcard in this card postally used in 1903 is the earliest use of the single word of which I am aware.

Art Souvenir Syndicate,

Denver, Colorado, USA

• ART SOUVENIR SYNDICATE, P.O. BOX 1528, DENVER

Denver seems to have been a hotspot for comic cards featuring donkeys with jokes about telephones⁷⁵. This company also published local topographicals.

Sir Algernon Edward Aspinall

• The West Indian Picture Postcards 14 Series. Sent for list. Algernon E Aspinall, 15 Seething Lane, London, E.C.

Sir Algernon Edward Aspinall, B.A., C.M.G., photographer and historian of the West Indies, (1871 to 1952) In 1914 Aspinall was the secretary of the West India Committee, Incorporated by Royal Charter which had been established in 1735 to protect trade in the British West Indies. It too had its address at I5 Seething Lane, London, EC⁷⁶. At his suggestion in 1908, the British Colonial Office urged several governments of the Carribean region to keep local historic sites, buildings, monuments and cemeteries in good condition. The Committee continues as a charitable organisation⁷⁷. Aspinall also wrote various editions of the Pocket Guide to the West Indies published by Duckworth & Co and other books about the region⁷⁸ and England, Oxford Men and Their Colleges, 1880-1892. When he visited Jamaica in 1924 a letter to the Kingston Gleaner referred to him as a “Prince of Englishmen”⁷⁹.

Friedrich Astholz junior

Hannover, Germany

• F. Astholz jun., Hannover 1903

Friedrich Astholz junior was a German publisher and photographer based in Hanover He published consecutively numbered postcards as early as 1999 and as late as one of the Ballhofplatz with Hitler Youth headquarters circa 1939. Early collotypes were published by Stengel & Company and this card by Trenkler.

Source: wikipedia Friedrich Astholz

Atlas Society, New York.

• Publ. Atlas Society 38 Perry Str. New York, U.S.A.

Atlas Society, 38 Perry Street, New York, published topographical photocards of the US which it had made in Germany. They have two numbers, presumably the larger one of the actual producer and the (much) smaller being the Atlas’s own record. The address is a residence in the West Village neighbourhood of Manhattan, where poet & novelist James Agee was later to live.

The Atlas Society was a membership organisation run by German emigrants, the American Picture Postcard Collector Society with an address in 1900 of PO Box 2447, New York. Essie Klein administered the membership which, at that time was 1 Mark to join and another 2 Marks per annum and the society was said to have 200 members. By 1906, when it was at 10 East 23rd Street, the society was publishing postcards and membership card number 1572.

Essie Klein sent this card in 1908. From the stage that the construction of the Flatiron building had reached, it is possible to date the photograph to the first half of 1902. The fashion for topicality would suggest that the card would be published quickly and that Ms Klein was using up old stock undivided-backs when she sent it half a dozen years later giving the current address.

The name of the defunct society has been reused since 1990 by another New York organisation.

J.I. Austin Company

Chicago, IL, USA

• Publ. by J.I. Austin Co., Chicago

J.I. Austin Co., printers, Chicago published lithographic reproductions of artwork and undivided-back cards of cartoons and artwork. These cards had elaborately decorated versions of the words Post Card. Austins published children’s books by George W. Gunn, including Adventures of Rufus Rastus Brown in Darktown in 1906.

Between 1900 and, at least 1915 Austins published The Sunbonnet Babies series by Eulalie Osgood Grover and Bertha Corbett Melcher. Postcards of Bertha Corbett’s darlings appeared as early as 1904. In all there were 15 sets of Sunbonnet Babies postcards, totalling about 100 to 120 cards, which were marketed as keepsake souvenirs, as well as countless singles sold from store racks as all-purpose greetings. A pocket map issued in 1906 offered a guide through the Sea of Matrimony.

Austen’s postcard number 241 featured a cartoon depicting a Jewish girl named Irma Kohn unable to use the telephone properly because her enormous nose blocks her from speaking in the mouthpiece. The poem offers another play on words, replacing nose’r for “no sir.”

Their less-offensive cartoons included the work of Hans Horina. Cards copyrighted in 1909 showed pairs of illustrations of Ireland and England. About the same time they published Anti-Race Suicide, a Teddy Roosevelt political advertisement.

In January 1913 Austens, then at 1323 Michigan avenue, advertised for girls aged 14 to 16 years, for clean, light shop work; bring certificates.

Sources: Antiques and Auction News; In the Long History of Picture Postcards, a Long History of Anti-Semitic Hate Salo Aizenberg

The Austral Stores

Perth, Western Australia

• Published by “The Austral Stores,” Perth, W.A.

W Jas Farley and R W Thomson traded as the Austral Stores at 369 Wellington Street, Perth. In July 1904 they were advertising cameras from 5 shillings and all the latest types of Columbia Gramophones and Moulded Records in the West Australian newspaper. Gold Moulded Records was a sub-label of Edison Records launched in January 1902 to market new cylinder records of hard black wax that could be replayed hundreds of times. These replaced earlier brown wax cylinders, and many titles were either re-recorded and/or re-numbered for issue on the new format. While sturdy, these cylinders had only two minutes of playing time. The term “Gold Moulded” first appeared in late 1903 and is found on cylinder boxes and catalogues until June, 1908. By July 1908 they were simply called “Edison Records” on boxes because a new method of record production had replaced the Gold-Moulding process.

In 1905 they advertised Pathe Freres’ Phonographs: We have just received a Sample Shipment of the above, and are offering the Machines at English List Prices and Records at 18s 6d per dozen. In 1906 their shop advertised Phonographs, Gramophones, photography and cameras, mounts and albums and boasted: We carry the largest stock of Talking Machines and Records in the State.

In 1910 the company published Forty Views of Perth and Freemantle, West Australia.

In 1902 Leopold Conrad demolished a row of shops in Hindley Street, Adelaide and, in 1903, built a dozen which he named The Austral Stores. The Austral Stores was built in an ornate Edwardian style, designed by architect Albert Conrad for his father. In 1921 the title “Austral Stores” was dropped and each of the tenants listed under individual addresses. In 1903 Sollitt and Matthews were in business as Austral Stores at Wollongong. It is far from clear whether the various Austral Stores were linked.

Source: Heritage of the City of Adelaide; Adelaide AZ

Christoph Friedrich Autenrieth, Stuttgart, Germany

• C.F.Autenrieth, Stuttgart

Christoph Friedrich Autenrieth, art and paper dealer, Stuttgart. Autenrieth was added to the list of suppliers to the Court of Württemberg⁸⁰on 6 January 1865⁸¹. Autenrieth published many artist-painted view cards of Stuttgart printed by Ernest Nister, Nurnberg (qv). Their artists included Peter Schnorr (qv).

The Automatic General Stores Ltd

London E.C.

• The Automatic General Stores Ltd., 4a Upper Thames Street, London E.C.

The Automatic General Stores Ltd., 4a Upper Thames Street, London E.C. registered 1st May, 1901 although the business seems to have been in existence by 1891. Two of the three directors were brothers Stuart and George Ross. The company was wound up by special resolution in December, 1904.

Stuart Ross was the managing director of the Automatic Supply Company which was in liquidation by 1901. It had four hundred vending machines trading from railway stations which were sold by the liquidator to an intermediary who passed them to the Anglo-Egyptian Automatic Trading Company, another Ross vehicle.

On 5 March 1906 Stuart and George Ross, then aged 38 and 35 respectively, went on trial at the Central Criminal Court in London (the Old Bailey) charged with fraudulently inducing people to buy shares in the Anglo-Egyptian Automatic Trading Company. The main complainer was a shareholder in the Automatic General Stores Company Limited.

Some of the more colourful evidence came from James Edward Duke of Lambeth, who was then out of employment. He said that about three and a half to four years previously he had been employed as painter and decorator to paint some offices at 159, Queen Victoria Street. When he finished that job he was engaged to serve Messrs, Ross and the Anglo-Egyptian Company as office-cleaner, porter and messenger. At ones stage, he was taken into the board room by one of the Mr. Rosses and asked to put his signature to as Company Secretary to a share certificate after which he signed more share certificates as Secretary than he could recall.

Both brothers were convicted on Thursday, March 15th, 1906; Stuart Ross was sentenced to 18 months’ hard labour and his brother George to 12 months.

All the Ross companies ended badly for the shareholders and creditors. Maurice Bray* points out that cards issued by this company and the British and Colonial Automatic Company, yet another Ross enterprise, use the same photographs as ones Midland Railway used from the Picture Post Card Company’s library. The history of the Ross Automatic businesses suggests that they were probably using the work of others.

* Railway Picture Postcards Maurice I Bray (Moorland Publishing Co Ltd 1986)

Automatic Photo-Printing Syndicate Limited

separate entry here

Matthew Auty

• AUTY LTD; PHOTO. TYNEMOUTH.
• Auty Series G.H.,W.⁸²

Matthew Auty (died 1895) set up in business in Tynemouth as a tobacconist in 1879 and photography became his hobby. Auty, who lived in Percy Park Road in Tynemouth, later opened a photography business at 20 Front Street, Tynemouth. He was at some stage in a business called Auty & Ruddock Art Photographers⁸³. Auty produced many thousand local views and it is claimed he was the first to introduce postcards to the region though in fact all the cards bearing his name seem to have been published by Hastings after Auty died. The earliest postmark on one of their cards, a view of Morpeth, is dated 31 March 1898⁸⁵. Auty’s views familiarised prospective visitors with the charms of the area.

3https://www.insidecdcr.ca.gov/2019/02/unlocking-history-ranger-soldier-william-byrnes-was-sq-captain-in-1850s/

4The lovely collection

5 Rowman & Littlefield,28 Apr 2016 page 29

6 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelardo_Rodr%C3%ADguez_Urdaneta

7 http://www.galeriadeartedominicana.com/cat.php?id=31413

9 Germany’s Ancient Pasts: Archaeology and Historical Interpretation since 1700 Brent Maner, University of Chicago Press, 27 Nov 2018 page 99

10 https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philipp_Ludwig_Adam

11 Friedrich Adolf Ackermann’s art publishing house, Munich

12https://www.ackermann-kalender.de/geschichte/

13https://www.ackermann-kalender.de/

14http://www.sfgenealogy.com/san_francisco_directory/1908/1908_193.pdf

15 San Francisco Call, Volume 108, Number 98, 6 September 1910

16https://www.shorpy.com/node/4538

17 Spirit of Jefferson, 8 May 1900

18 Reliable Sources: The National Press Club in the American Century Turner Publishing Company, 1997

19 Aktiengesellschaft

20 https://st.museum-digital.de/index.php?t=people&id=9808

21http://www.bordighera.net/personaggi.htm

22 Viewbooks, also called souvenir albums or view albums, are books that contain commercially-published groups of photographs depicting a place, activity, or event.

23http://snaccooperative.org/ark:/99166/w64v1gpt

24 www.scraps.dk/engelsk/ameistereng.htm

25http://www.albert-gieseler.de/dampf_de/firmen4/firmadet48956.shtml

26http://www.tpa-project.info/html/body_rp_trademarks_1.html

27

28 Félix Bonfils, Photographer (1831-1885)

29http://www.palestine-family.net/index.php?nav=3-83&cid=90&did=3100&pageflip=5

30http://www.cime.es/WebEditor/Pagines/file/Ambit/Setembre2014/8-Josep%20Terr%C3%A9s%20Ginard,%20un%20militar%20amb%20%C3%A0nima%20de%20fot%C3%B2graf%20(Miquel%20A.%20Marqu%C3%A8s).pdf

31 Alinari Competition Exhibition 1902 in Italian

37http://filatelist.no/media/1223/filateli-nytt_nr_1_2009.pdf

38 Kunstforlag

39 1857-1922, father of Marcus Melchior

40https://da.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Alstrups_Kunstforlag

41 Terni is a city in the southern portion of the Region of Umbria in central Italy.

42https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgilio_Alterocca

43registered by Luiga Alzetta, Zanco’s widow

44 https://www.doaks.org/library-archives/dumbarton-oaks-archives/collections/ephemera/names/luigia-ved-zanco

45 http://www.archiviodistatovenezia.it/leva/personDetails.php?id=18517

46 Venice Illustrated Guide

47http://siusa.archivi.beniculturali.it/inventari-pdf/umbria/Il_Solco_Citta_di_Castello.pdf

48https://www.pulpartists.com/ANC.html

49https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_News_Company

50https://www.doaks.org/research/library-archives/dumbarton-oaks-archives/collections/ephemera/names/the-american-news-company

51https://www.metropostcard.com/publishersa1.html

52http://www.lcpimages.org/inventories/brightbill/bbprinterhist.htm

53Essay Proof Journal April 1944 Official Journal of the Essay Proof Society https://archive.org/stream/essayproofjourna01n2essa/essayproofjourna01n2essa_djvu.txt

54 American Souvenir Card Company Postcards; A Postal History Saga Charles A. Fricke http://digital.ipcprintservices.com/publication/?i=58274&article_id=610922&view=articleBrowser#{%22issue_id%22:58274,%22view%22:%22articleBrowser%22,%22article_id%22:%22610922%22}

55https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Anderson_(fotografo)

56http://historiccamera.com/cgi-bin/librarium2/pm.cgi?action=app_display&app=datasheet&app_id=3496&

57https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:James_Anderson

58http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/rcs_photographers/entry.php?id=35

59https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/PH-Y-30745-B/1

60http://www.maisondelaphotographie.ma/article.php?id=49&t=lexique

61https://journals.openedition.org/mcv/2719?lang=en

62https://www.independentmedia.co.za/our-company/about-us/

63http://www.rhodesianstudycircle.org.uk/argus-printing-publishing-company-ltd/

64 Aristophot, Leipzig

65 Taucha is a town in the district of Nordsachsen, in the Free State of Saxony, Germany. It is situated on the river Parthe, 10km northeast of Leipzig.

66 Abbreviation of Regierungsbezirk – Government District

67http://www.stereoskopie.com/Raumbildbaende/Aristophot_Aktien-Gesellschaft/body_aristophot_aktien-gesellschaft.html

68Stabimento – factory or works

69http://www.dxpo-playingcards.com/xpo/deck-month/pages/deck-13-06.htm

70 Emanuela Gennuso , Archivist http://lerizeplus.villeurbanne.fr/arkotheque/client/am_lerize/encyclopedie/fiche.php?ref=33

71 Jews in Nineteenth-Century Egypt By Jacob M. Landau

72http://ydoa.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/8-August-Edition.pdf

73 York Evening Press 26 March 2001

74 York Press 11th November 2016

75 See Frank Thayer

76http://westindiacommittee.org/caribbeansgreatwar/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/General-Meetings-Minute-Book.pdf

77http://westindiacommittee.org/

78http://www.librarything.com/author/aspinallalgernonedwa

79https://newspaperarchive.com/kingston-gleaner-feb-01-1924-p-33/

80 The Kingdom of Württemberg was a German state that existed from 1805 to 1918, located within the area that is now Baden-Württemberg.

81http://archive.is/M1cQB#selection-2221.17-2237.15

82 Godfrey Hastings, Whitley Bay (qv)

83http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=380925.0

84http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/postcard-sized-glimpse-into-the-past-4567469

85Picture Postcard Annual 2020