Directory L

Labouche Frères, Toulouse, France

• Phototypie Labouche freres, Toulouse
• Labouche freres, imp.-edit., Toulouse
• Labouche fr., imp.-edit., Toulouse

Labouche frères, publishing house created in Toulouse in 1848, produced collections of postcards from 1900 to 1960. Hector-François Labouche started the business as a printer and was succeeded by his sons, Eugène (1867 to 1938) and Lucien (1864 to 1959) who operated the business from 1900 to 1960. From 1900 the company evolved from printing illustrated documents such as posters towards stationery products and postcards. Their shop in Capitol Square was one of the largest and most modern in Toulouse with printing and storage warehouses behind, in rue Gambetta. In the mezzanine, a room furnished with drawer cabinets housed the stock of postcards. The first postcards date from before 1900, and one of the first series was entitled Sites and Monuments of the Southwest. After that, their undivided backs each had the name of a department of Midi-Pyrenees (Haute-Garonne, Ariège, Hautes-Pyrenees, Gers, Tarn, Tarn-et-Garonne, Lot and Aveyron) or nearby (Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Pyrénées-Atlantiques, Lozère) as well as a more exact location. The house employed many local artists, the engraver lithographer Mercadier and the photographers Henri Jansou and Amédée Trantoul who are often credited as well as Lucien Labouche himself. Between 1905 and 1939 they produced several tens of thousands of postcards. In the 1930s, Maison Labouche printed tens of thousands of banknote-like vouchers for a group of traders in Nice called Au Confort Moderne – Economic Union of the Coast. In the 1960s, the house reissued facsimiles of some cards. In 1993, after the final closure of the business, the General Council of Haute-Garonne bought the archive, comprising between fifty and sixty thousand documents: postcards, photographs, photographs and documents relating to the company.

Source: CPArama.com; wikipedia

This card; The Rabastens Bridge is a road bridge located on the Tarn between Rabastens and Coufouleux in the Tarn in the Occitanie region of France. Rabastens’ first bridge was the suspension bridge shown in this card. Built in 1836, it had an oak deck. It was replaced by the current masonry bridge in 1924.

Emile Lacour, Marseilles, France

• E Lacour, 19, rue Thubaneau
• E Lacour, 19, rue Thabaneau
• PHOT LACOUR
• Phot Lacour
• PHOTOTYPIE E. LACOUR MARSEILLE
• E L PHOT

Victor Emile Rosales, known as Emile Lacour (1848 to 1913), phototypist and photographer. Established in 1873 at 56 rue de Rome, Marseille and then, around 1900, at No. 19 rue Thubaneau, from where he published his postcards. Lacour published divided backs from 1904. In 1910 Lacour sold his photographic collection to publisher-librarian Paul Ruat who re-edited several of his postcards under his own name. Lacour published numbered view cards of Marseille and the Aubagne both as undivided- and divided-back, the former often on blue paper.

A Lacour card with an interesting history here.

Lacy, Warwick, England

LACY WARWICK

In the Leamington Spa Courier of 19 December 1896 Henry H Lacy at 8, High Street, Warwick (Telephone No. 16) advertised as Bookseller, Commercial And Fancy Stationer, Account Book Manufacturer, Artistic And General Printer; Books, Music, and Magazines Bound in any Style. He also described the business as (LATE LACY AND SONS) who had published Lacy’s threepenny guide to Warwick and neighbourhood illustrated with numerous engravings: including the Castle, churches and town of Warwick together with Guy’s Cliffe, Gaveston’s monument and every place of interest 32 pages + plates.

In 1912 Lacy published A list of Members of Parliament for Warwick, and for Warwick and Leamington from 1885. The Warwick and Warwickshire Advertiser of 12 November 1938 advertised: H.H.LACY (Prop.: Parker Herbert Son) SAMPLE BOOKS OF PRIVATE CHRISTMAS CARDS NOW READY PLEASE ORDER EARLY AND SAVE LAST MINUTE ANXIETY 8, HIGH STREET Tel. 16

My black-and-white photo card of St Mary’s Church, Warwick was postally used on 10 July 1902.

Source: Genes Reunited; Biblio.co.uk

Paul Lafaye

• Paul Lafaye

Paul Lafaye, born in Mirande a commune in the Gers department in southwestern France on 15 July 1856, where he was a photographer and where his parents had a bookshop, arrived in Nemours to marry Marie Rosalie Corrieu, a native of that city on 28 August 1882. Some of his pictures are published in postcards by Eyries brothers (qv), publishers in Nemours.

Lafayette

• Lafayette

Lafayette was founded in Dublin in 1880 by James Stack Lauder, who used the professional name of James Lafayette. The business expanded rapidly and studios were established in Glasgow (1890), Manchester (1892), London (1897), and Belfast (1900).
According to the Lafayette website the majority of negatives from the Dublin studio were destroyed in 1951 – allegedly sold for re-use as glass panelling for green-houses. His 1899 portrait of Dame Clara Ellen Butt DBE, the world famous English contralto, circulated as postcards both acknowledging his work and not.

This card: Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson (16 January 1853 to 6 November 1937) was an English actor and theatre manager. He was considered the finest Hamlet of the Victorian era and one of the finest actors of his time, despite his dislike of the job and his lifelong belief that he was temperamentally unsuited to acting.

On 26 November 1908 Forbes-Robertson chaired the inaugural meeting of the Actresses’ Franchise League and his wife Gertrude Elliott became the second president a year later. He was a regular speaker at events in support of suffrage. Johnston Forbes-Robertson was knighted in 1913 at the age of 60, at which point he retired briefly from acting. Source: wikipedia

Louis Lagaert, Brussels

• Lagaert, Brux.

Louis Lagaert (born 2 May 1865) Belgian publisher and printer. Lagaert started his working life with Belgian railways. In 1897, he opened a bookshop at 56 Ooststraat in Schaerbeek, close to Robianostraat where he and his wife and young son were living with his mother-in-law. Lagaert was already creating national publicity for books and magazines that he sold, a skill he later used in his postcard business. Schaarbeek is one of the 19 municipalities of the Brussels-Capital Region of Belgium. Located in the north-eastern part of the region, it is bordered by the City of Brussels.

In 1897, Ernest Castelein transferred his printing studio from rue Rembrandt in Brussels to 20 Rue Impériale in Schaerbeek. He specialized in printing with phototype. This technique consists of transferring photos onto mirror glass, and then printing them in ink on paper with a printing press. Photos of people, works of art and other subjects can be reproduced excellently in books and magazines.

In the previous years Castelein had already provided the phototype printing of various books, bulletins for the Royal Academies of Science and Medicine and portfolios with prints of photos or art objects. In 1899 Castelein produced a folder with reproductions of a selection of works of art exhibited at the ‘Salon de la Libre Esthétique’. This group of artists was founded in 1893 by Octave Maus, lawyer and writer.

Castelein’s studio in Schaerbeek was less than a kilometre from Lagaert’s bookshop in the Ooststraat. They got to know each other around 1897-98. Castelein was looking for someone to take over his business. He stayed for a while to guide Lagaert and teach him the phototyping technique. From the summer of 1899, scientific books, art books, prints, etc., appeared under both their names. By 1900, Lagaert was stamping his correspondence with ‘Louis Lagaert, succ.’ He printed the name Castelein on his publications until the end of 1902.

Louis’ son Edmond Désiré Louis Lagaert (28 September 1889 to 23 April 1915) is first mentioned as a collaborator in 1910 in his father’s industrial and documentary photography. Lagaert stopped production of picture postcards to concentrate on industrial photography. He seems to have closed the business entirely around 1912 with final entries in the 1913 directories. He is said to have worked afterwards for Eugène Desaix and is recorded in directories as a commercial representative from 1920 to 1933.

Source: Kortrijk Postkaarten Blogspot; Fomu Directory of Belgian Photographers

This card: Belgium as it exists today was established following the 1830 Belgian Revolution, when it seceded from the Netherlands, which had itself only existed since 1815. National Day commemorates 21 July 1831 on which Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg-Gotha swore allegiance to the new Belgian constitution, thus becoming the first Head of State of an independent state of Belgium under a constitutional monarchy and parliament.

Leopold II (9 April 1835 to 17 December 1909) was the second King of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909 and the self-made autocratic ruler of the Congo Free State from 1885 to 1908. Apotheosis  also called divinization or deification, is the glorification of a subject to divine levels and, commonly, the treatment of a human being in the likeness of a deity. This card was issued by Lagaart in his own name. Another interesting Lagaert card here.

Maria Laloge, Nantua, Ain, France

• Laloge, phot., Nantua PHOT A B & Co. NANCY in a roundel

Marie Rose – known as Maria – Guinet (26 April 1826 to 13 April 1903) photographer. On 29 October 1856 she married Claude (Claudius) Laloge, a wood-gilder. Madame Laloge was a photographer in Lyon before moving to Nantua. Her studio at 36, rue Grenette in Lyon was open in 1872 and the couple were still in Lyon in 1876. In April 1876, the Society of Friends of the Arts in Lyon bought a still life by Mme Laloge (“Le Salut public” – the public greeting).

In 1881, the Laloges and their daughter were listed on rue Neuve in Nantua. Claudius Laloge was still a gilder and his wife a photographer. She wasn’t the first female professional photographer in this town of 3,300 inhabitants – Amélie Mortagne, had preceded her. She published albumen photographs bearing her name and the claim to have silver and bronze medals without specification as to their source or discipline.

By the 1901 census, Claudius Laloge was a bookseller and his wife had no profession. Her postcards in Nantua were largely local topographicals which were produced into the divided-back era. This one was produced for her by Bergeret (qv). In 1906, the portrait of a local retired doctor who had just died was exhibited in the windows of the Laloge bookshop.

Madame Laloge, died in Nantua at the age of 72. In 1906, three years after his wife’s death, Claudius Laloge was listed as a photographer.

Sources: Portrait Sepia; Dr Ducret

Luis Lamarque, Santiago, Cuba

• For sale “Siglo XX” St Thomas baja 2, Santiago de Cuba

Luis Lamarque, photographer, Santiago de Cuba. Denver Public Library has a print of this photograph in their Salsbury collection, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show attributing it to Lamarque. Whether he published it as this postcard is not clear.

Lamarque photographs were taken mostly in and around Santiago during the U.S. Military Rule of the Island (1899 to 1902). In 1900 he was paid $125 as official photographer to the Cuban administration together with $20 travel expenses. His images are chiefly of locations of historical interest concerning the Spanish-American War and of various public works in process or completed. While still a teenager, Guantanamo poet Regino E. Boti Barreiro (1878 to 1958) met Lamarque.

Santiago de Cuba is the capital of Cuba’s southeastern Santiago de Cuba Province, facing a bay off the Caribbean Sea. Founded by the Spanish in 1515, it is known for colonial architecture and revolutionary history. Siglo XX (20^th Century) is a district of Santiago.

Source: Denver Public Library

This card: Arbol de la paz en invierno (peace tree in winter) Hobson and Surrender Trees

Richmond Pearson Hobson ( 17 August 1870 to 16 March 1937) was a United States Navy rear admiral who served from 1907 to 1915 as a U.S. Representative from Alabama. A veteran of the Spanish–American War, he received the Medal of Honor years later for his part in that conflict. He later became a leading proponent of Prohibition in the United States.

In the early days of the Spanish–American War, he was with Admiral William T. Sampson in New York, and arrived off Santiago on 1 June 1898. In order to bottle up the Spanish Navy squadron of Admiral Pascual Cervera y Topete during the Battle of Santiago de Cuba, Hobson took temporary command of the collier Merrimac, which he would attempt to sink as an obstruction in the channel leading to Santiago Harbour. The attempt was made early 3 June, under heavy Spanish fire, which disabled the steering gear of the collier. Hobson did sink Merrimac, but was unable to place her in the shallowest part of the channel. With his crew of six, he was picked up by Admiral Cervera himself and treated quite chivalrously.

Hobson became a hero of the American press while he was a prisoner of war in Cuba. His portrait appeared in hundreds of newspapers with embellished stories of his bravery in volunteering for what was perceived as a suicide mission. A fund was raised to aid his parents in avoiding foreclosure of their mortgage. When Hobson was released during a prisoner exchange on 6 July 1898, hundreds of American troops snapped to attention, then burst into cheers as he passed. He was deluged with speaking invitations when he returned to the United States. After dining with President William McKinley, Hobson travelled west by train en route to San Francisco and the Philippines. Crowds greeted his train at many stations, and his enthusiasm for kissing admiring young women made him a sex symbol of the Victorian age. He became a sort of celebrity during the rise of popular journalism at the turn of the century and was referred to as the most kissed man in America.

The Santiago Surrender Tree marks the site at which Spanish forces, led by General Toral, surrendered Santiago de Cuba to U.S. forces, led by General William Shafter, on 17 July 1898 during the Spanish-American War. On 1 July 1898 U.S. and Cuban troops had taken El Viso Fort, the town of El Caney and San Juan Heights, and San Juan Hill, with the help of the Rough Riders under Teddy Roosevelt. These victories opened the way to Santiago de Cuba. Clara Barton, founder of the American Red Cross, was among those who cared for the wounded at Santiago.

By an Act of Congress, the Santiago Surrender Tree became the responsibility of American Battle Monuments Commission on 1 July 1958.

The original tree died, but in 1998 during the centennial ceremonies the Cuban government planted a new tree. The memorial area is surrounded by an iron fence, which is made up of barrelled Spanish Mauser rifle actions.

Sources: ABMC; Wikipedia

E. Landor

• Raphael Tuck & Sons’ “ART” Series 865 “CAT STUDIES BY CHARLES REID” ART PUBLISHERS TO THEIR MAJESTIES THE KING AND QUEEN Phototyped in Austria Landor’s Cat Studies

E. Landor was a specialist pet photographer in Ealing, London at the turn of the century. His cat and dog photographs featured in books and on postcards. He produced a quality magazine featuring his work, printed on shiny art paper and with high definition photos.

With effect from 28 October, 1904 Walter Ferris Biggs and Reginald Wellbye (E. Landor), carrying on business in partnership as Photographic Artists, at Nos. 61 and 63, Knightsbridge, London, S.W., under the style or firm of ” E. LANDOR,” had been dissolved by mutual consent. Reginald Wellbye took liability for the partnership debts.

Author and adventurer Arnold Henry Savage Landor was pictured with kittens Kerman and Zeris, with whom he travelled in Across Coveted Lands  a Journey overland from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta

This image dates from 1903 and was repeatedly issued as a divided-back. Photographer Charles Reid also produced images of cats for Tucks (notably Series 866) but it is not clear what input he had to the use of this image of Landor’s.

Langfier Limited, London

• LANGFIER, PHOT
• Langfier

Louis Langfier joined his nephew Louis Saul Langfier Langfier & Company, 158 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow in around 1896 and they were named in The Edinburgh Gazette of 14 October 1898 , as co-owners of Langfier and the firm in Glasgow. Langfier senior left Scotland in 1899 to set up a London firm, leaving Louis Saul to look after the Glasgow studio. Langfier Ltd was founded on Old Bond Street, London. The firm opened a second branch on Finchley Road, and by the early 1920s, it had about fifty employees. After WWI the studio at 345 Finchley Road and the Hampstead Art Club next door were both run by Albert Elsy a successful portrait photographer. Langfier Ltd went into liquidation during the Second World War. Langfier’s photograph of Miss Decima Moore featured in many cards including Tuck’s Stage Favourites series.

In 1905 the estates of Louis Saul were sequestrated.

Sources: National Portrait Gallery; Forgotten Ancestors; The Edinburgh Gazette of 14 October 1898

S. Langsdorf & Company, New York.

• S.Langsdorf & Co., New York. – Germany

S. Langsdorf & Company, printers and publishers, New York were founded by two German émigré brothers, Samuel and Sigmund Morris Langsdorf. They are listed at 15 Crosby Street and 151 Grand Street according to Trow’s Directories of the Borough of Manhattan and Bronx, City of New York in 1907 and 1908. Samuel’s residence is listed as 1125 Madison Avenue. Sigmund is recorded as founder and owner of the business in Distinguished Jews of America in 1917 where the business was said to be ivory goods and novelties at 72 Spring Street. Sigmund was then more than seventy years old but still at work every day. In 1914 Sigmund is recorded in the list of payments made to the Hebrew Free Loan Society at 108 Second Avenue, New York in 1914. The founders were the father and uncle of Edwin B. Langsdorf, who worked as as designer designer with the Pyramid Company, a division of the company following diversification in the 1920s and incorporation in 1922.

Source: ancestry.co.uk David W. Kalies; A Collection of Biographical Sketches of Jews who Have Made Their Mark in Business, the Professions, Politics, Science, Etc;

This card: Roger Williams Park is an elaborately landscaped 427-acre (173 ha) city park in Providence, Rhode Island and a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It is named after Roger Williams, the founder of the city of Providence and the primary founder of the state of Rhode Island.

The land for the park was a gift to the people of Providence in 1872, in accordance with the will of Betsey Williams, the last descendant of Roger Williams to inherit his land. In the late nineteenth century bicycle races were held on a half-mile oval in the park for the championship of the Rhode Island division.

Source: wikipedia

Louis Larger, Paris.

• Larger, phot

Louis Larger, photographer Paris. François Louis Larger was born in Colmar in 1849. In 1876, he was domiciled 21 Place Saint-Michel in Dijon, address of the photography workshop of Mrs. Emery-Dufour, whose daughter Blanche he married on 15 May 1877. He worked a few years with his mother-in-law in Dijon where he was still living in 1881. He continued his career in Paris in October 1882 by buying the premises of photographer Jean Theodore Jamin at 13 Rue Chapon (3^rd arr). In 1884 Larger bought the workshop in Rue St Martin of Jean Théodore Jamin. In April 1892, Larger, still in Rue Chapon, described himself as a printer as well as photographer. Larger produced heliotypes of the International Universal Exhibition of 1900. In 1905 produced a number of postcards of Sudan and Volta. More prosaicly, my card CAPRICE No 3501 is a studio photograph of children with a stuffed donkey.

Sources: laphotoduxix.canalblog.com; portraitsepia;

Laroche-Joubert & Company

Angouleme, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, France

• L-J & Cie Angoulême
• L. J. & Cie, edit., Angouleme-Paris

The Laroche-Joubert company was founded by Jean-Edmond Laroche-Joubert in 1840. 28 years later he transformed it into a cooperative. The Papeterie coopérative d’Angoulême then included several manufacturing plants, including those of the Escalier (until 1921) and Girac at La Couronne, and two workshops opened in 1843 in Angoulême, avenue de Cognac and rue Leonard-Jarraud. In 1888, a new papermaking unit was added by the purchase of the annex of the Papeterie du Martinet belonging to Laroche frères, located in Basseau, in the commune of Saint-Michel. Cards featured the work of Rubellin père & fils (qv), Smyrne which they seem to have published from Angoulême and Paris.

This card: Eglise Saint-Nicolas du Chardonnet is a Roman Catholic church in the centre of Paris, in the 5th arrondissement. It takes its name from the chapel first built there in the 13th century, in a field planted with chardons (thistles). This was later replaced with a church. The clock tower is part of an earlier structure, built sometime prior to 1600. The church was reconstructed between 1656 and 1763.

Since the expulsion of the parish priest and his assistants by traditionalist Catholics in 1977, the church has been run by the Society of St. Pius X which celebrates traditional Latin masses there. In April 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the congregation of Saint-Nicolas defied the social distancing regulations then in force by holding an Easter Vigil. A live stream on YouTube showed the priest and deacons in close contact, not wearing masks, and Holy Communion was given with bare hands.  About 40 people were in attendance. The priest was fined €135.

The building in the foreground is no longer extant but featured in a painting by Maurice Utrillo (26 December 1883 to 5 November 1955) Born Maurice Valadon, Utrillo was a French painter of School of Paris who specialized in cityscapes. Utrillo is one of the few famous painters of the Montmartre quarter of Paris who were born there.

Source: wikipedia

L. F. Larsson

Kristianstad, Skåne County, Sweden

• Imp. Forlag: L. F. Larsson, Christianstad

L. F. Larsson of Christianstad published undivided-backs, local topographicals produced by Knackstedt & Näther in Hamburg. Photographer Betty Larsson had a studio in Kristianstad which may be relevant but Larsson is a common name in Sweden.

Source: Famgus Vykort

This card: Rupert Mitchell (7 October 1897 to 1975). Uncle John sent this card on 1 October 1904, perhaps for Rupert’s seventh birthday.

Rupert Mitchell joined the 1/6th Battalion West Yorkshire Regiment early in 1914 when he was only 16. His elder brother George Oswald Mitchell was a pre-war territorial and was mobilised as a private to the same regiment on the very first day of the war. Both men saw infantry action in Flanders before transferring to the Royal Engineers Special gas Brigade in May 1916. Both survived the war. The Special Companies of the Royal Engineers were a war time invention. The Great War was the first in which chemical weapons were deployed. There was great moral shock and outrage at the first use of Chlorine, released by the Germans against defenceless French troops in the Ypres Salient. The Special Companies of the Royal Engineers were formed to develop the British response. By 1918, gas was used both offensively and defensively, delivered by a range of sophisticated techniques.

CROSLEY HALL is a village in Allerton township, Bradford parish, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, three miles north-west of Bradford.

Source: Great War Forum Jeremy Mitchell

Latapi y Bert, Mexico

• Latapi y Bert, Mexico

In 1899 Latapi & Bert were a household goods business called El Globo (the balloon) selling haberdashery, glassware, bonnets and toys from shops in Mexico City at 8 Calle del Refugio, 25 Coliseo Viejo and 21 Coliseo Viejo. The partners were Fernando Latapi Rangel (1862 to 1929) and film-maker* Enrique Bert. They went into the business of publishing and selling cards and produced about two thousand different cards between about 1903 and 1930. They were both topographical and ethnographical. Some of them were photographs by Carl Wilheim Kahlo (1871 to 1941). They also produced stereoscopic views with a logo of a hot-air balloon including their name and Apartado 922, the Post Office box address from which they issued their cards.

Latapi’s father was the French photographer Eugenio Latapí, His son Fernando (11 October 1902 to 28 October 1989) became a leading dermatologist.

At Easter in 1926, pioneer Mexican cartoonist Nahui Olin and photographer Antonio Garduño made a study trip to Nautla, Veracruz in a car belonging to Bert, a four-cylinder Templard, so luxurious and expensive that there were only three in Mexico City.

*Bert is also described as especialista de cine – stunt man?

J. Latieule, San Sebastian, Spain

• J. Latieule, editor

Latieule published photocards of San Sebastian numbered well into double figures.

One of his photographs of Villa Alta shows Paul Déroulède and Marcel Habert posing outside. Paul Déroulede (1846 to 1914), a French writer and politician, antisemitic, ultranationalist and mass agitator was sentenced to ten years in exile on 4 January 1900. Marcel Habert, Déroulède’s right-hand man, was also sentenced to five years in exile. Deroulade moved to San Sebastián to serve his sentence in Villa Alta, a magnificent home from which the entire La Concha beach could be seen and which, from the first moment, became a place of pilgrimage for supporters and curious people, not only Spanish but also French. Déroulède used postcards to forward his cause and readily featured in them.

Source: BIOGRAFÍA [B] PAUL DÉROULÈDE: UN CONSPIRADOR EN SAN SEBASTIÁN

Laurent, Madrid

• FOT. LAURENT, MADRID

Jean Laurent (23 July 1816 to 24 November 1886) was a French photographer who mostly worked in Spain where he was Juan Laurent Minier. He moved to Spain in 1843, and settled in Madrid. Until 1855, he worked as a box and paper maker, creating luxurious boxes for pastries and marbled paper for book bindings. He won a bronze medal at the Madrid Industrial Exhibition in 1845. He became interested in photography from having done work colouring photographs and opened a studio at 39 Carrera de San Jerónimo, near the Congress of Deputies, with the Spanish photographer, José Martínez Sánchez (1808 to 1874).

They patented “Leptographic Paper” which produced positives, rather than the negatives produced by the albumen print process. The paper enjoyed some popularity in Spain and France, but was never widely used. Laurent held the title Fotógrafo de Su Majestad la Reina (The Queen’s Photographer) from 1861 to 1868.  That year, he opened a store in Paris, devoted exclusively to selling his photographs of Spain and Portugal.  The firm hosted a publishing house, Fototipia Laurent.

The establishment was called J. Laurent & Cía from 1863, when he was joined his son-in-law Alfonso Roswag who survived him. There followed two years of litigation protecting their sales pitch in the Prado Museum.  Around 1900 Joseph Jean Marie Lacoste Borde (1872 to c.1930). took over the business and, a year later, reached a deal with the Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts, the Count of Romanones, for a royal order allowing to sell in the Prado. The arrangement obliged Lacoste to make a copy of all the works of the Museum and other places that the Ministry considered appropriate. Lacoste took charge of renovating the Museum’s photographic archive, making new copies in 18 x 24 cm format and then taking an inventory initially by virtue of a Royal order of 26 June 1901.

In 1975, the Laurent collection was acquired by the Spanish government. The Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España has archived over 12,000 images created by Laurent and his company.

This card: In late 18th century, Carlos III transformed the area in Salón del Prado, decorating it with fountains that still stand today including this statue of the God of Music constructed between 1781 and 1802. Apollo appears carrying a lyre and accompanied by allegorical sculptures of the four seasons, since, as the Sun God, he is responsible for the birth and change of seasons.

Source: Museo del Prado

Mme Laurent,

Moulins, Allier, France

• Mme Laurent, Editeur

Mme Laurent, postcard publisher, Moulins, a commune in central France. Madame Laurent published photo-cards of Bourbonnais, a historic province in the centre of France that corresponds in part to the modern département of Allier.

Lautz & Balzar

Lautz & Isenbeck

Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany

• KUNSTANSTALT LAUTZ & BALZAR, DARMSTADT.
• Kunstanstalt Lautz & Isenbeck Darmstadt
• Kunstanstalt Lautz & Jsenbeck, Darmstadt

Photographer Heinrich Lautz had a number of partners; Lautz & Balzar, Darmstadt published topographical photo-cards of Germany and Netherlands into the divided-back era. They also published the official cards for the XI Jura Feast of Singing on 21 June 1903 in Tavannes in Switzerland and books of photographs for tourists. Firms called Lautz & Isenbeck and Metz & Lautz also published undivided-back cards from Darmstadt. Lautz published a series of volumes of 12 photographs of German towns. At the turn of the century he also published topographical photographs in the carte de cabinet format.

Photography by Lang and Isenbeck was published by Franz Joseph Bronner in 1898. Lautz & Isenbeck published Gruss Aus cards including a lithograph honouring the members of the Club Vosgien which was created on 31 October 1872 in Saverne under the initiative of Richard Stieve, judge at the Court of Saverne in France.

A. M. Laverty & Company,

Bradford, England

• Laverty & Son, Bradford

A. M. Laverty & Company Limited are wholesale suppliers of religious articles in Otley, West Yorkshire who trace their business back to 1859 when James Laverty established his business in Bradford. The business is now carried on into the fifth generation and no doubt the publication of postcards has been one of many changes and diversifications. My card features Pope Pius X who was head of the Catholic Church from August 1903 which is late for an undivided back card in the UK.

Source: A. M. Laverty & Company Limited

William Lawrence, Dublin

• Lawrence, Publisher, Dublin.
• LAWRENCE, PUBLISHER, DUBLIN

On 20 March 1865, at the age of 24, William Mervin Lawrence opened a photographic studio opposite the GPO at Sackville Street, Dublin. Over the years, the studio successfully photographed the length and breadth of Ireland. 40,000 glass plates are now available online as the Lawrence Collection. They date mainly from the period 1880 to 1914 but some plates go back to 1870. Lawrence was not himself a photographer but an early entrepreneur. He opened his studio in his mother’s toy and fancy-goods shop. At that time there was great interest in studio portraits and he employed a portrait photographer. His brother, John Fortune Lawrence, was taking stereo photographs and William took a keen interest in them and took over the sales. He employed a team of printers and artists (colourists and retouchers). In 1880 when the dry plate process came in, Lawrence employed Robert French as his chief photographer. Lawrence was already publishing view cards by 1900 but his Irish humour cards are most collected. He is also noted for his motor races series. The similarity of back suggests a link with Wyndham & Company of Acton (qv).

Source: Lawrence Collection; Picture Postcards and their Publishers Anthony Byatt 1978 Golden Age Postcard Books page 151

August Lax

Hildesheim, Lower Saxony, Germany

• Dr. von R. & J. in D. Verlag A. Lax, Hildesheim

August Lax, successive photographers, printers and publishers, Hildesheim. In 1832, (Franz) August Lax (1800 to 1870) founded a lithography and art dealership in Hildesheim. In 1849 a printing works was added. This was followed in 1852 by a bookshop and the establishment of a book publishing company.

The publishing house was continued in the family by August (Bodo) Lax (1841 to 1914), from 1914 by (Franz Arnold) August Lax (1878 to 1972) and from 1943 by August Lax (9 April 1905 to 11 December 1976).

Early publications included:

• 1860 Legends, fairy tales, farces and customs from the city and monastery of Hildesheim by Karl Seifart;
• 1893 The miracle of the rose bush a romantic play in one act with a prelude by Adolf Vogeler;
• 1899 History of the Diocese of Hildesheim in three volumes by Adolf Bertram (1859 to 1945);
• On the action of formaldehyde on p-substituted phenols, Albert Dirk Berkhout’s 1903 dissertation.

During an air raid on Hildesheim on 22 March 1945, the old town of Hildesheim and the bookshop, publishing house and printing shop located there were destroyed, but rebuilt after the war. In 1993 the print shop was sold. Between 25 January 1994 and 2019, when it closed, the publishing house operated as Dorothea Lax Verlag GmbH & Co.

Perhaps by 1870, Lax produced albumen prints as cartes de cabinet, local topographicals rather than studio portraits, a valuable resource for the reconstruction of the city from the bombings of WWII.

Sources: wikipedia; obituary 1976

This card: Hermann Prell (born 1854 in Leipzig) was the artist of the Hildesheim town hall frescoes which Lax featured in a series of postcards.

The Rathhaus is externally a little disappointing, but within is a noble hall, the proportions of which … are absolutely correct judged by modern canons … But more important than its proportions are the splendid frescoes covering the walls with some of the most beautiful mural decorations I have ever seen, beautiful in design, and most beautiful of all in their soft yet radiant color. Next to the jewel-like interior of St. Mark’s in Venice I place this all but matchless interior of the Rathhaus at Hildesheim.

oldandsold.com

This card was printed by Rommler & Jonas of Dresden (qv).

Joseph & Maurice Lazarus,

Maputo, Mozambique

• J & M. Lazarus, Photographers Box 312, Lourenço Marques 2281-3

The Lazarus Brothers, photographers, 39 Rua Aranjo, arrived in Lourenço Marques in 1899, one of the earliest firms to settle in the Portuguese East African town. The brothers were born in Sunderland, England, in the 1870s. The family left for South Africa sometime in 1880s. Their route to Lourenço Marques might have been influenced by the Transvaal railway line, which had opened in 1895 — the construction of which they had documented — connecting Pretoria with southern Mozambique. In Lourenço Marques, the affluent, international capital of colonial, pre-independence Mozambique, the brothers established one of the first, and most successful, commercial houses of photography. During their time there they concentrated mainly on scenic views, ethnographicals and, later, on fashion photography. By the 1890s, Joseph and Maurice owned a studio in Barberton, a town in the Mpumalanga province. They also operated a studio in Beira, a coastal town in central Mozambique. In 1901 they published an album entitled Souvenir of Lourenço Marques:

Lourenço Marques is unquestionably the most picturesque place in South Africa and one that no traveler to the Cape should fail to visit … The old-time almost romantic aspect of the town, …[its] many palm trees swaying to the will of the wind with dignified condescension… the strange costumes of the cosmopolitan peoples who make up the population and the …buildings…[which are] oriental in architecture. Within the last five years [it] has merged from the chrysalis state of primitiveness into a busy constantly improving town.

The brothers remained for nine years during which time Maurice (otherwise Moses) Lazarus was elected to sit on the inaugural executive committee of the Jewish community. In 1908 they returned to Lisbon to continue photographic work from a studio in the Rue Ivans. In 1930 both men received Ordem Militar Sant’Iago da Espada (Order of St. James of the Sword), an honour given by the President of Portugal for outstanding merit for their work as photographers for the Portuguese Royal household and, later, for the Republic.

Lourenço Marques was officially renamed Maputo in 1976 and is the capital and most populous city of Mozambique.

Sources: Forward; University of Cambridge Digital Library; Jewish Chronicle Anne Joseph 2 February 2017

Leather Bottle

Cobham, Gravesham, Kent, England.

• Published for the Pickwick “Leather Bottle,” Cobham, Kent.

The Leather Bottle, a pub known to many as Charles Dickens’ favourite ale house in Cobham. Dickens often walked to Cobham, a place which he described in ‘Pickwick Papers’, referring to the Leather Bottle as a clean and commodious village ale house. Dickens visited the Leather Bottle on many occasions before he bought Gads Hill in March 1856, sometimes staying overnight. Dickens enjoyed taking his friends to the “Leather Bottle,” He immortalised the pub in the “Pickwick Papers” as the refuge where Pickwick discovered the love-lorn Tracy Chapman drowning his sorrows.

Anthony James Smith, who was 52 in 1911, was licensee between 1899 and 1913 and would have undertaken the publication of promotional postcards such as this.

Twice enlarged in recent times, the inn preserves much of its original 15th century character and timberings. The Leather Bottle still advertises as a warm, relaxing half-timbered traditional pub, restaurant and hotel serving modern English cuisine, serving real ales.

Sources: The Leather Bottle dover-kent.com Gadshill House

Louis Le Bon, Ostende, Belgium

• Le Bon, edit., Ostende

Louis Ferdinand Le Bon, (1856 to 1923), photographer, above the Aquarium, Ostende. Frenchman Le Bon started up in 1877, at first in an annex of the Hôtel de Flandre, later on the corner of Van Iseghemlaan and Louisastraat. In 1893 he had an aquarium built in the vaulted cellars below his studio, one of the first indoor attractions on the coast. He referred to it in advertising the location of the studio, an astute piece of double marketing. In 1899 to 1900 he started a large souvenir shop at 44 Vlaanderenstraat which traded until 1930. In 1888, he opened a branch at 21 Zuidzandstraat in Bruges and he also had a branch in Blankenberge,

Le Bon was primarily a portrait photographer with a large number of sets and props in his studio including a real beach cart, a hot air balloon, flower-decorated wooden fences, a stuffed donkey, the sea, and a beach with real sand. In 1895 he was advertising cartes de visite for 4 and 8 francs. Later, Le Bon offered portraiture both on postcards and postage stamps. Beyond the studio, Le Bon recorded important events and the construction of notable buildings.

Le Bon was a prolific publisher of postcards, the earliest postmarked 1898, many of which were sold from his bazar in the Vlaanderenstraat. Variously-numbered series featured comic and serious bathers, beach, harbour and park views, fishermen and women, net knitters and all the attractions of the resort. His bigger panorama cards were also popular.

All this was not in vain – he retired to a villa in Cannes leaving his son Emile Gaston Le Bon (born 25 November 1883) to continue the business.

Sources: FotoMuseum Provincie Antwerpen: Directory of Belgian Photographers; Ostende de Stad an See

Ernest Le Deley, Paris

• Héliotypie E. LE DELEY
• Héliotypie E. LE DELEY, Paris
• Héliotypie Le Deley Paris Charles Voisey London
• Héliotypie E. LE DELEY, 73, rue Claude-Bernard, Paris
• Héliotypie E. Le Deley, 73, Rue Claude Bernard, Paris
• Hélio. E. Le Deley, 73, Paris
• Breveté déposé* E.L.D. Paris
• E.L.D. Paris
• … Le Deley, Paris
• Helio E. Le Deley, Paris

* Patent filed

The Parisian printing firm of E. Le Deley, located at 73, rue Claude Bernard, was founded by the photographer Ernest Louis Désiré le Deley (1859 to 1917). The company was a major publisher of heliotype, black-and-white postcards. There are also postcards signed by E. Le D. Paris in 1902, Elledé, and, for the Near East and Turkey, ELD. Coloured postcards were also published as early as 1905 when they were at 127 Boulevard de Sébastopol and 1 rue Tracy, Paris. Around 1911 Le Deley was publishing real photographs postcards. In the preceding years he made a series of photographs of the archaeological excavations of Carthage (before the festival of 1907) which he also published, in monochrome. He published postcards about the Near East around 1920. Finally, he also published the photographs of Müller, a photographer who also sometimes works for the Neurdein brothers. He finally edited as official-printer some official documents of the Universal Exhibition of Paris in 1900. After Le Deley’s death, the firm was run by his sons, but went bankrupt in 1930. Heliotype printing involved exposing a gelatin film under a negative, hardening it with chrome alum, and printing directly from it. Their undivided-backs included art-work from the museums of the Paris region, the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1900 and a numbered series of tinted images of major London buildings published for the British market.

Source: Dumbarton Oaks; Photographes d’Afrique

Robert Lederbogen

Halberstadt, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany

• R Lederbogen, Halberstadt

Robert Lederbogen, publisher, Halberstadt started in business about 1882. He published local topographical Gruss aus cards in the early days of picture postcards. A series of postcards featured Kaunas, now in Lithuania, for the Lithuanian market. They were marked Approved by the Imperial Governorate of Kovno (Russian for Kaunas). The Governorate of Kaunas was a governorate (guberniya) of the Russian Empire. Its capital was Kaunas. It was formed on 18 December 1842 by Tsar Nicholas I from the western part of Vilna Governorate. The governorate included almost the entire Lithuanian region of Samogitia and the northern part of Aukštaitija. It came to an end in 1915 with the Russian revolution.

Lederbogen’s books included Der Harz Bodetal-Rübeland-Brocken, 30 pictures, partly one-sided. In the 1950s the business was based in Karl-Marx-Stadt (Chemnitz) in East Germany.

Lederer & Popper, Prague

• Lederer & Popper, Prag

Lederer & Popper (Josef Lederer & Rudolf Popper) designed, and probably also produced, black-and-white, coloured, and photomontage picture postcards with stamped embossed lithographic frames. The collection of Prague picture postcards issued by this company is among the most extensive. They are usually marked by L. & P. or L. & P.P. the hand-coloured picture postcards from this renowned company are perhaps executed in the most satisfactory quality of all the picture postcards of old Prague; the hues are usually muted, approaching authenticity.

Source: Old Prague on Old Postcards

Ledermann, Vienna

• K. Ledermann, Wien I
• C. Ledermann, Wien I
• C. Ledermann jr., Wien I Fleischmarkt 12

Karl Ledermann, 12 Fleischmarkt, Vienna 1, was one of several of the Ledermann clan publishing cards in Vienna. C. Ledermann published undivided-backs from the same address. Photographer Paul Ledermann also later published from number 20 of the same street. Karl Ledermann published photocards of East Africa with the mark Lichtdruck K. Ledermann, Wien I.

This card: The Franz-Josef-Kai in the 1st District of Vienna, was created in 1858 to 1860 as part of the demolition of the city wall, which began in March 1858. It was named after Emperor Franz Joseph I, who commissioned the razing of the walls around his royal seat. At that time the quay had buildings in the typical Ringstrasse style, most of which were destroyed during WWII in artillery duels between the German Wehrmacht and the Red Army in the Battle of Vienna. Source: wikipedia

Source: Old East Africa Postcards

Bernhard Lehrburger

Nuremberg, Germany

• B. Lehrburger, Nurnberg

Bernhard Lehrburger, (died 13 May 1946 aged 76) photographer and postcard publisher, Nuremberg. Lehrburger started business in 1894.

In the 1920s Lehrburger was located in Hochstraße in the Kleinweidenmühle district of tenement houses in the Nuremberg style, classicism and art nouveau. He passed the business to his daughter Renate and her husband Alfred Mainzer. However, in 1936 Lehrburger and his wife, daughter and son in law emigrated to the US, leaving behind their property behind.

Two years after arrival in New York, Alfred Mainzer set up as a card publisher from a rented desk on Fifth Avenue. Their first big break was at the 1939 World’s Fair where they obtained exclusive license for photo cards.
The Fair was overshadowed by the outbreak of WWII but the proceeds allowed them to establish new line of greeting cards,

Lehrburger died in New York leaving behind the next generation of his family importing cards in the languages of German and other refugees from European troubles.

Sources: Pracht über der Pegnitz: Mietspaläste an der Hochstraße

Lili Wronker Family Collection 1842-2002

Frank H. Leib,

Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

• FRANK H. LEIB. PUBL. SALT LAKE CITY.
• FRANK H. LEIB. PUB. SALT LAKE CITY.

Frank H. Leib (1868 to 1943) 247 South Second West, Salt Lake City. He published a numbered series of tinted photo-cards of Utah including one with photos of Brigham Young and 21 wives. In 1903 he presented a complementary Guide to Salt Lake City and Articles of Faith of the Mormon Church which also advertised his Curio Shop at 21 E. Third South Street. In the Salt Lake Tribune of 19 December 1905 Leib advertised Everything NEW – large line toys and Juvenile books in paper and linen in his NEW Store at 336 Main Street, perhaps prompted by the member of staff who had set up on her own and was advertising her own shop in the same journal. Leib appears in the business section of R. L. Polk & Co’s Salt Lake City Directory 1908 with the entry Lieb F. H (post cards), 203 Brooks Arcade.

The Hugh C Leighton Company, Portland, Maine, USA

• THE HUGH C LEIGHTON CO, MANUFACTURERS, PORTLAND ME
• THE HUGH C LEIGHTON CO, MANUFACTURERS, PORTLAND, ME., U.S.A.
• H.C. Leighton Co., Portland, Me. Manufacturers of Postal Cards.

The Hugh C. Leighton Company, Portland, a printer and major publisher of national view-cards, especially scenes of New England. They printed most of their cards in four distinct styles usually employing tinted halftones. Most of their cards had a subdued but recognizable pallet. While some cards were printed at their plant in the US, most were manufactured in Frankfurt, Germany. Almost all their cards were numbered. They merged with Valentine & Sons in 1909.

This card: The Palmer Mansion, shown here, was constructed between 1882 to 1885 at 1350 N. Lake Shore Drive and, in its day, was the largest private residence in Chicago, located in the Near North Side neighborhood and facing Lake Michigan. It was designed by architects Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost of the firm Cobb and Frost and built for Bertha and Potter Palmer. Palmer was a prominent Chicago businessman who was responsible for much of the development of State Street. The construction of the Palmer Mansion on Lake Shore Drive established the “Gold Coast” neighborhood, still one of the most affluent neighbourhoods in the city. The mansion was demolished in 1950.

Palmer coerced the city to build Lake Shore Drive adjacent to his lakefront property to enhance its value. The drive was originally intended for leisurely strolls for the wealthy in their carriages, but as the auto age dawned it took on a different role completely. It is now an expressway that runs alongside the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Most unusually for undivided-backs, this card features a motor vehicle.

Source: metropostcard [offline in October 2022]

Gabriel Lékégian, Cairo

• Comptoir Philatelique d’Egypte – Alexandrie. – cl^*. Lékégian & C.

*Cliché – photograph (literally negative)

Gabriel Lékégian (1860 to 1920) was an Armenian photographer who had a studio in Cairo during the latter part of the 19th century³². Active in Egypt and the Middle-East from 1870 to 1890, he left an important body of work, with thousands of images documenting Arab life in Egypt and other North African countries. Some of the best 19th century images of Egypt were produced by Lékégian. Around 1880, Lékégian was based in Constantinople. He moved to Egypt soon after the British established a protectorate there and learned his trade in one of the Armenian or Greek photographic studios Cairo. After establishing his studio in 1887 opposite Shepheard’s Hotel at the heart of Cairo’s European district, Lékégian positioned himself as an artistic photographer, presenting himself and his work as aesthetically superior to his competitors³³. Armenians dominated the early photographic industry in Egypt. Lékégian rapidly acquired a reputation for the quality of his work. He won the Gold Medal at the International Photography Exhibition in Paris in 1892, and the Grand Prize at the International Exhibition in Chicago in 1893. As his reputation grew, he turned the area between Qasr al-Nil Street and Opera Square into a golden triangle of Cairo photography. Lékégian became a favoured photographer for Egyptian royalty, many of whom, such as Princess Nazli, had their portraits taken by him. After he was employed as the official photographer of Egypt’s British Army, Lékégian’s business truly prospered. This led to numerous commissions to illustrate books and, uniquely, provide reportage shots on the massive government building operations in the region³⁴. In the early 1920s, Lékégian’s studio mainly concentrated on portraits and producing postcard compilations from his old negatives. It is likely that he shut down the business and retired soon after.

Sources: Historical Boys’ Clothing; wikipedia; G. Lekegian on Facebook

Henri Ferdinand Le Maillot,

Saint-Malo, France

• Collection H.L.M.

Henri Ferdinand Le Maillot (1866 to 1953) publisher, Saint-Malo. Archival documents describe Le Maillot as a medium-sized, skinny man with a bilious complexion. He resigned as a teacher after a few months declaring in his letter of resignation that the life was detrimental to his health and that if he did not change his profession he would be continually ill. He enrolled as a member of the Malouine and Servannese Photographic Society in 1900, and became treasurer in 1901. He really began to photograph and publish postcards in 1902. Some of his first shots were published by the editions Germain Fils Ainé (qv). For his own postcards, Le Maillot first used the words Collection HLM, followed by a plumed armour helmet above the initials HLM. He set up his sales store in the courtyard of 8 rue Sainte-Anne with his mother, Victoire Le Maillot in charge. In November 1910, an investigation by the magistrate of the district of Saint-Malo into indecent assaults and pornography ended his career.

Not to be confused with H. Lecoq et Mathorel of Alençon who used the logo L & M.

Source: Chmura Sophie, “The reverse of postcards, editions of the HLM helmet”, postcards from Rennes or elsewhere, 5 September 2014; Les principaux éditeurs en France; https://www.cparama.com/forum/logos-des-editeurs-de-cartes-postales-anciennes-t8631-80.html#p43686; cparama; Les principaux éditeurs en France

Le Moine & Malmeström

Gothenburg, Sweden

• Le Moine & Malmeström – Konstförlag,  Göteborg

Le Moine & Malmeström published local topographicals and postcards for children into the divided-back era. These included a series of 10 illustrations of and quotes from the winter poem Tomten by Viktor Rydberg.

Their postcards included a Telegram series of postmen with openable telegrams attached and Koffert, featuring a railway porter with an openable case on his back. In the attachments one could write private greetings – at a cost; these novelties required postage of ten öre, double the usual postcard rate.

Osborne Leonard le Moine (24 November 1878 to 20 November 1946) started the business in 1900. Gothenburg-born Le Moine was from a Walloon family. He served as a lieutenant in the army service corp reserve. He wrote a number of books, his career as an author stretching from WWI to WWII. He owned a lake and a mansion located near Arvika, in Värmland, 250 kilometers north of Gothenberg.

Léon & Lévy, Paris

• LL.
• LL. L’IMPRIMERIE NOUVELLE PHOTOGRAPHIQUE* – PARIS
• L.L. Brux
• L.L.B.

* New Photographic Printing

Moyse Léon and Isaac (known as Georges) Levy began as assistants in the Parisian photographic studio Ferrier-Soulier under the Second Empire. They founded their own studio in 1864 and sold prints on albumen paper, mainly stereoscopic prints, signed Léon and Lévy LL. The Léon & Lévy firm took part in the 1867 Universal Exhibition where they won the Emperor’s Gold Medal. In 1874, the Léon and Lévy studio became J. Lévy et Cie, Isaac Georges Levy then being the only company director. On the arrival of Georges Lévy’s two sons in 1895, Ernest and Lucien, the company grew. They had an intense period of activity, editing individually sold prints, compiling tours albums (Spain, Portugal, Morocco, America) as well as postcards, all between 1864 and 1917, when the business came to an end with a merger with the Neurdein Brothers (qv) in 1918. Picture Postcard Annual 2020 records a card postmarked 17 May 1905 but this is clearly not near the start. They then publish a large number of postcards known as stereo-cards with the mark “LL” which are bought in series of 12 or 24 views in paper envelopes.

Their postcards were sold at the Arc de Triomphe and topical subjects included the visit of the King and Queen of Italy to Paris on 14 to 18 October 1903 and the arrival at Le Havre of the Glasgow-built steamship Aquitaine on a trans-Atlantic crossing.

Source: cparama; wikipedia; neurdein.over-blog.com

E. Lerch, Vienna

• Phot. u Verlag E. Lerch, Wien

E. Lerch, photographer and publisher, Vienna published photocards of royalty and the region.

Lessertois-Colas

Luxeuil-les-Bains, Haute-Saône, France

• Lessertois-Colas, edit, Luxeuil-les-Bains

Lessertois-Colas, cutlers, Luxeuil-les-Bains dealt in cutlery, swordsticks and novelty metalware, advertising their medal-winning. They published excellent photographs of the locality as undivided-backs.

P. Letschert

Bautzen, Saxony, Germany

• Ediz Artistica P. LETSCHERT Bautzen Germania Libreria Internazionale EMILIO PRASS 59-60 Piazza del Martiri Napoli

Letschert’s lithographic Art Institute published local Gruss aus cards and made cards for Italian publishers.

T. F. Leuthall,

Claremont, Cape Town, South Africa

• T. F. Leuthall, Bookseller & Stationer, Claremont

T. F. Leuthall, Bookseller & Stationer, Claremont. Leuthall’s topographical photo-cards included the widely famous garden of Mr H B (or H M) Arderne, one of the best-known citizens of Capetown. Arderne Gardens is a public park and arboretum established in 1845 by Ralph Henry Arderne, a timber merchant originally from Cheshire, England.

Thomas Lewis

• Lewis Photo

Thomas Lewis (1844 to 1913) lived in Moor Street, Birmingham, next door to Pickering and Stern, photographic artists. As a schoolboy he must have been fascinated by what he saw. The draped studio relied on a large window, good weather, and clients being punctual to catch the best light. On a stand was the camera, made of wood and possibly of the sliding type, for bellows had achieved little popularity in England by the 1860s. A hand-painted landscape rolled down behind a low, mock garden-wall, and the props of the time stood around: a small Doric column, chairs with headrests to prevent sitters’ heads moving during the long exposure times, and a few tasteful house plants completing the clutter. No doubt Thomas would also peer into the coloured gloom of the darkroom and would catch a smell of candles burning in the safelights. The distinctive pungency of collodion being carefully run across glass plates added a magical touch to the new alchemy. In comparison the prospect of perpetuating his father’s tailoring business seemed just a little dull.

At the age of twenty-five, Lewis opened his first studio, in Moor Street in 1871. A year later he moved to better premises in up-town Paradise Street. This foundered with the increasing overheads the expensive site demanded. Then, for five years, Lewis was a photographer for the famous view-card firm of Frith and Sons(qv). He travelled the whole of Great Britain, and acquired a feeling for views which was to remain with him all through his life. He learned what to include in the scene and what to leave out. In 1879 he set up in business on his own again and this time he succeeded. Lewis photographed many of Birmingham’s expanding industries and became one of the country’s first commercial and architectural photographers along with Bedford le Mare of London and Stewart Bale of Liverpool. In 1894 he moved to 200 Stratford Road, Sparkbrook.

Source: PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART AND SOCIAL HISTORY

Charles L’Hôpital & Co, Paris

• C.L.C.
• C.L.C. and complex anchor logo with intertwined initials J. D. and a superimposed C on the anchor.

Charles L’Hôpital & Co, was a postcard publishing house founded by Charles L’Hôpital (1873 to 1934) in Paris. The company used the initials C.L.C. and the logo of an anchor. Postcards with these initials are said to have been published between 1905 and 1909 though this is a late start for undivided backs in France and one of mine was postally used in 1904. Their anchor logo was of the associated company J. Duval & Cie. It is possible that one company published photographs of the other company. In 1905, these two companies were assumed by the postcard publishing company E.L.D., founded by Le Deley (above) which initially retained the anchor as a logo. The firm later moved to 73 rue Claude Bernard. My cards are all photographs of Paris – monochrome images with two or three digit numbers and hand-coloured images with three-digit numbers. Number 370 was postally used on 8 August 1904, suggesting that the business had by then been producing cards for some time.

Source: Dumbarton Oaks

A. L’Hoste, Paris

• L’H., Paris

Nationwide publisher of postcards – at 139 rue Lafayette when publishing divided-backs. L’Hoste was the first secretary of the French Union of Illustrated Postcard Publishers.

The relationship of this publisher to the firm of L’Hoste et Cassegrain who also published undivided-backs in Paris is not clear.

Source: Dumbarton Oaks; La Chambre Syndicale des Éditeurs Français de la Carte Postale Illustrée (“CPI”) created in 1904, becoming, in 1906 the Union Chamber of Postcard and Photoengraving https://www.cparama.com/forum/chambre-syndicale-editeurs-francais-carte-postale-illustree-t1394.html

L’Hoste et Cassegrain, Paris

• L’H. & C. PARIS.

L’Hoste et Cassegrain might have been a co-operation between L’Hoste (above) and Louis Cassegrain, a postcard publisher from La Rochelle for the 1900 Paris Exposition. Cassegrain is noted in the catalogue of the 1898, Rochefort-sur-Mer exhibition L’Exposition Internationale et coloniale de Rochefort-sur-Mer for the manufacture of registration records.

Sources: www.archinoe.fr; LOUISexpocolo1;

Lichtenstern & Harari, Cairo

• LICHTENSTERN & HARARI, CAIRO
• Lichtenstern & Harari, Commission-Agents, Cairo.
• Lichtenstern & Harari.
• L &. H., Cairo.

Lichtenstern & Harari, importers and postcard publishers, Cairo, Egypt. Joseph Max Lichtenstern (born in Vienna on 19 March 1876) moved to Egypt from Vienna in 1893 and took up permanent residence there in 1897. In 1899 he began publishing postcards under the name, Cairo Postcard Trust, but also issued black & white postcards under his own name. Two years later he teamed up with David Harari to form an importing business. They also published postcards. Between 1904 and 1908 they seem to have taken on another partner, changing their name to Lichtenstern, Harari & Co., but they continued to use their original name, Lichtenstern & Harari on postcards. From at least 1911 they published cards with the name L. & H. – The Cairo Postcard Trust, Cairo⁴⁶. After Harari left in 1912 the firm was sold to Romanian Max H. Rudmann (qv), who had been a publisher from at least 1905. Lichtenstern continued to have some business dealings with Rudmann but, after he returned to Vienna in 1914 for a visit, he ended up serving in the Austrian Army for the duration of World War One⁴⁷.

This card: The Savoy Hotel in Aswan was quite a grand affair:

At Assouan there are three excellent hotels, two of which are large modern houses. The Cataract, belonging to Cook, is admirably looked after by M. Pagnon (proprietor of the hotels at Luxor) … On the Elephantine Island, in the midst of a charming  garden, there is another palatial building, the Savoy Hotel, belonging to the Anglo-American Company, and which enjoys equal popularity with the Cataract.

Amédée Baillot de Guerville writing in the first years of the 20th century

The Anglo-American was a recently-formed Nile steamer company, which came into being toward the end of the 1880s and entered into direct competition with the well established Thomas Cook & Son passenger services. Naturally enough, having transported boatloads of tourists up the Nile, the last thing the new company wanted was to hand them over to its rival to accommodate, so the Anglo-American took to building hotels of its own. Its Savoy was a palatial, boomerang-shaped structure with accommodation for 80 guests and a riverfront setting among the palm groves at the northern tip of Elephantine. There was a magnificent dining hall, bar, ladies’ lounge and a billiard room. Any inconvenience arising from being separated from the town by water was more than made up for by a luscious terraced garden coloured with golden-plumed parkinsonia, crimson poinsettia, and bushes of chrysanthemums which had to be drowned every day to keep them alive; a long hedge of oleanders overhung the river.

Source: Egypt in the Golden Age of Travel; metropostcard [offline as at October 2022]; The Postcard Album no 14 page 5

Another card: here

Louis Liebenfeld, Stockholm

• L. Liebenfeld, Stockholm

Louis Liebenfeld, photographer, was born in Germany in 1846. He moved to Stockholm where he published photo-cards of southern Sweden and ships serving it. His output of undivided-backs included images bursting through the pages of a newspaper, in his case the Stockholms Dagblad and Dagens Nyheter. He also published cards of thousand krone notes bursting into view through paper frames. Liebenfeld died of diabetes mellitus in St Erik’s Hospital on 10 September 1924. He was 78.

Karl Liebhardt & Company

Esslingen am Neckar, Baden-Württemberg, Germany

• Druck u. Verlag von K. Liebhardt & Co., Esslingen,
• K. Liebhardt, Esslingen a. N.

Karl Liebhardt (22 September 1846 to 11 September 1916) royal court photographer and postcard publisher, Esslingen. Liebhardt founded a photo studio in Stuttgart in 1873 and moved it to Esslingen in 1880. In 1893 he made a five-month trip to the United States to document the Chicago World’s Fair. He brought back over 400 pictures from this trip, which were exhibited in Esslingen and Stuttgart the following year. In 1894 he was appointed royal Württemberg court photographer by King Wilhelm II. Liebhardt also produced catalogues and posters for industry, which is why he added a department for light printing to his business. In 1897 he gave up his studios and devoted himself entirely to printing. The production of postcards by private publishers had been approved in Germany since 1885 and Liebhardt’s business flourished. He started publishing postcards and sold a wide variety, mostly topographicals but also greetings cards and cards for the forces. In 1909 local architect Albert Benz built a villa on Berkheimer Strasse for Liebhardt. The earliest recorded use of one of his postcard is 6 August 1900.

Source: Liste der Kulturdenkmale in Esslingen am Neckar; wikipedia

Gustav Liersch & Company, Berlin

• GL Co monogram
• GUSTAV LIERSCH & CO., BERLIN

Gustav Liersch (1865 to 1945) postcard publisher, 16 Friedrichstrasse, Berlin S.W.48. Undivided backs included many photos of glamorous ladies. He published portraits of German royalty and establishment figures into WWI when the firm published a poster of Photographs of paintings and prints depicting the Kaiser and his family, to be sold as Christmas presents.

Hermann Limbarth

Bad Lauterberg im Harz, Lower Saxony, Germany.

• Verlag Herm. Limbarth (C. Mittag’s Nachf.) Bad Lauterberg i. Harz
• Verlag Herm. Limbarth, Buch- u. Kunsthdlg. Harzandenken Leihbibliothek

In 1891 Carl Mittag opened a bookshop at 133 Hauptstraße, Bad Lauterberg, a town in the southern Harz mountains. Hermann Limbarth took it over the next year. His book and art shop also operated as a lending library. His Harz souvenirs included local topographical photocards into the divided-back era. Some of the undivided-backs seem to have been produced by Trenkler of Leipzig

In the 1930s Limbarth was succeeded by Friedrich Rath and later his wife. Dr. Klaus Dietze took it over until 1 January 1965. Freya Moller (initially as Freya Jacobshagen) handed it on to her daughter Susanne Kinne on 1 April 2016. Only at that point was the name Limbarth departed from in favour of Moller.

From the beginning the various owners have been committed to cultural life in the city. At one of Limbarth’s Weltanschauung (world view) days Max Planck gave a lecture. Planck, (23 April 1858 to 4 October 1947) was a German theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918.

Source: 125 Jahre – und ziemlich gut gehalten Boris Janssen;

G Lips, Montreux, Switzerland

• G Lips edit Montreux GLM
• G.L.M.

G. Lips, Montreux, Switzerland from at least 1903, a publisher of monochrome and black & white collotype view-cards, some with hand colouring.

Source: metropostcard [offline in October 2022]

This card: The municipality of Territet was developed for tourism before nearby Montreux, which is why the Orient Express train stopped at the Territet station and not in Montreux. Foreign tourists started to stay in Territet from 1848 onwards and their numbers picked up from 1861 when the train station was opened. In 1879 the first phone in Switzerland was installed in Territet. Territet also had the first tennis court in Switzerland. It was created in 1894, exclusively for the use of the English tourists; Swiss and other nationalities weren’t allowed access. The Territet–Glion funicular railway, one of the oldest in Switzerland, was opened in 1883. Source: wikipedia Another card here.

W M Lisle,

Hexham, Northumberland, England

• Lisle’s New Series

W. M. Lisle, Fore Street, Hexham published local topographical photocards. His New Series were produced by ETW Dennis (qv). In the divided-back era Tuck (qv) Glosso cards of Hexham were specially published for Lisle.

Charles Livadas, Cairo.

• Sold at Mr. Ch Livadas – Cairo.

Charles Livadas, bookseller, Cairo. In 1869 Livadas opened his bookshop The Tourist on Sharia Kamel Pasha de L’Opera in central Cairo, across the street from Shepheard’s Hotel and Cook’s office, a prime spot from which to attract foreign tourists. In the Autumn of 1893, publisher John Murray’s agent in Cairo reported to him that Livadas was promoting Baedecker’s Guides in preference to Murray’s and failing to replace his stock of Murray’s publication. Livadas was still in business during WWI. Although The Tourist is listed as the business of B. Livadas & Kutsikos in the 1904 edition of Baedecker’s Egypt and the Sudân; handbook for travellers, a 1915 photograph of his shop shows Chas Livadas as a bookseller, stationer and fine art dealer who also undertook developing and printing Kodak film. Livadas’ cards were numbered black and white ethnographicals with the photograph taking the whole side of the card and a caption in a sans-serif font that looks rather modern.

Source: Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People Amara Thornton UCL Press, 25 Jun 2018 page 131; Australian War Memorial; Egypt and the Sudan, a Handbook for Travellers Baedeker

Arthur Livingston, New York

• Arthur Livingston, Publisher, New York. Logo of woman surrounded by eagle, US flag in colour and banner with GREETINGS FROM PICTURESQUE AMERICA
• ARTHUR LIVINGSTON,N.Y.

Arthur Livingston of New York was one of the early pioneer postcard publishers in the US, his earliest cards dating from 1897. He produced a wonderful set of cards of Spanish American War naval ships and many views and sets of comic postcards. Livingston’s cards were all numbered in sequence, many issued as Private Mailing Cards. Livingston produced cards until about 1907. The figures in their cards lampooning the St Patrick’s Day Parade are said to have a distinct suggestion of monkey features and the book Making the Irish American: history and heritage of the Irish in the United States specifically discusses Livingston penny postcards in the context of 19th century prejudice against the Irish in America.

Sources: Archivo Historico y Fotografico de Puerto Rico; Toronto Public Library

Robert Livingston

Englewood, N.J., USA

• R. Livingston, Englewood, N.J.

Robert Livingston, (died 19 February 1948 aged 79) stationer, Englewood. He conducted a prosperous stationery business for many years from a shop on the corner of Dean Street and Palisade Avenue, Englewood which he purchased in 1916. Livingston retired from active participation in the stationery business in 1926 and left its management to his son, Robert, Jr.  (or “Bus” as he was called). When the old wooden structure on this site was destroyed by fire in 1936, he erected a modern store and office building, known as the “Livingston Building,” to replace it.

In the spring of 1937, the stationery business known as Robert Livingston, Inc., managed by Robert, Jr., encountered financial difficulty and went into voluntary bankruptcy in June-July. Livingston arranged an advantageous settlement with the creditors and saved the business. Later that year, he made a will in favour of his second wife which was unsuccessfully challenged by his daughter in an ill-advised court action.

Percy Lloyd

Albury, Guildford, Surrey, England

• LLOYD, ALBURY

James Edward Percy Lloyd, (15 June 1865 to 6 July 1946) postmaster, photographer and postcard publisher, Albury. In 1884 Lloyd’s parents moved to a house in Albury on the estate of Duke of Northumberland. As well as photography, his father James became the postmaster and young Percy delivered Albury’s first telegram – to the Duke. In 1892-3 he took over the business from his father. In about 1898, after a trip to Germany, Lloyd persuaded Frank “Bulldog” Lasham, the leading stationer in nearby Guildford to sell post cards with pictures on them. “Bulldog” was sceptical about the innovation but Lloyd won him round by giving him twelve thousand cards on the basis that he would only pay for them when they were all sold at a penny each. Lasham was soon wanting more and became an exclusive agent for Lloyd. The cards were printed in Germany at 30 shillings for the minimum order of one thousand of each view to be sold at a penny each with, of course, a narrower margin when sold wholesale.

Percy Lloyd toured in a pony trap laden with wet-plate camera, tripod and portable dark tent, cases of glass plates, chemicals and developing dishes. It was pulled by “Tommy” and driven by young Bert Stedman from nearby Watery Lane. They often appear in the cards, Bert standing slightly hunched as if holding his breath, as indeed he probably was. Lloyd’s earliest known card was franked in August 1901, well ahead of most British competition.

Percy later recalled: “It was hard work at first, but once the thing got going I could hardly cope with the orders. There was a counter running the whole length of my shop piled with nothing but postcards, and a stream of people was in all day, some spending 17/- and 18/- at a time in buying them.”
Percy was a family man; his wife hand-tinted cards while his bulky camera equipment accompanied family holidays in Margate. Increasing prosperity saw the pony and trap replaced by an American steam road car. It caught fire at Ewhurst and was at all times a local sensation. However, its heat affected his photographic plates. By 1910 he had bought a De Dion Bouton open tourer. It was still the only car in Albury.

Not to be confused with: Albury Lloyd, British photographer active 1860s to 1900s.

Sources: Albury History Society; Surrey Live

This Card: The Catholic Apostolic Church, is a Christian religious tradition also referred to as Irvingism or the Irvingian movement, in honour of Edward Irving (4 August 1792 to 7 December 1834) a Scottish Presbyterian clergyman, generally regarded as the main figure behind its foundation. He taught that God could work miracles in His Church as easily now as two thousand years ago. Irving had a notable preaching style and carried a miniature copy of Ossian in his waistcoat pocket, from which he frequently recited passages with sonorous elocution and vehement gesticulation. A veiled allusion to Irving’s striking eloquence made in the House of Commons by George Canning, led to an invitation to preach in London and appointment to what is now the Lumen Church in Bloomsbury in July 1822. Irving preached on prophecy up and down the country. In 1828 his apocalyptic lectures crowded the largest churches of Edinburgh on summer mornings.

Conservative Evangelical author Stephen Sizer says that the Church was formed on the first day of Advent in 1826, when Henry Drummond (1786 to 1860), a city banker, politician, and High Sheriff of Surrey and, afterwards, an Apostle in the Church, opened his home at Albury Park to a group of some twenty invited guests to form a Prophetic Parliament and discuss matters concerning the immediate fulfilment of prophecy. Irving and Drummond held Albury Conferences three years running.

Although 1826 is earlier than the date of formation generally accepted, the account certainly reflects the importance of the place; Albury was regarded as the unique centre of the Universal Church and the Apostles’ Chapel, a Gothic Revival building designed by William MacIntosh Brookes in 15th century Gothic style, was completed there in 1840. The Church was organised in 1835 with a fourfold ministry of apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastors. As a result of schism in the Church, other Irvingian Christian denominations emerged.

The Chapel remains in the care of the Catholic Apostolic trustees. It stands maintained but unused.

Sources: Ship of Fools; wikipedia; wikipedia

Lo Cascio & Schiavo

Palermo, Sicily, Italy

• C. Lo Cascio e Schiavo

The 1902 Palermo Agricultural Exhibition instituted a section for illustrated postcards, with an exhibition of the most beautiful contemporary cards. Lo Cascio & Schiavo were one of the local shopkeepers specialising in the postcards trade.

Although my card refers to C Lo Cascio, others online refer to G Lo Cascio, particularly into the divided-back era.

Source: La Republica Palermo.it

This card: The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo are burial catacombs in Palermo. Today they provide a somewhat macabre tourist attraction as well as an extraordinary historical record.

Palermo’s Capuchin monastery outgrew its original cemetery in the 16th century and monks began to excavate crypts below it. In 1599 they mummified one of their number, the recently-deceased brother Silvestro of Gubbio, and placed him in the catacombs. Bodies were dehydrated on racks of ceramic pipes in the catacombs and sometimes later washed with vinegar. Some bodies were embalmed and others were enclosed in sealed glass cabinets. Friars were preserved with their everyday clothing and sometimes with ropes they had worn in penance. Initially the catacombs were intended only for deceased friars. However, in later centuries it became a status symbol to be entombed in the Capuchin catacombs. In their wills, local luminaries would ask to be preserved in certain clothes, or even have their clothes changed at regular intervals. Priests wore their clerical vestments, while others were clothed according to contemporary fashion. Relatives would visit to pray for the deceased and to maintain the body in presentable condition. The catacombs were maintained through donations from the relatives of the deceased. Each new body was placed in a temporary niche and later placed into a more permanent location. So long as contributions continued, the body remained in its proper place but if relatives stopped sending money, the body was put aside on a shelf until they resumed payments.

The catacombs were officially closed in 1880 but tourists continued to visit. The last burials are from the 1920s. The catacombs contain about 8,000 corpses and 1,252 mummies that line the walls. The halls are divided into categories: Men, Women, Virgins, Children, Priests, Monks, and Professionals. Famous people buried in the catacombs include a colonel in French Bourbon uniform. Some bodies are better preserved than others. Some are set in poses; for example, two children are sitting together in a rocking chair. The coffins were accessible to the families of the deceased so that on certain days the family could hold their hands and they could “join” their family in prayer. Source: wikipedia

August Loeffler, New York

• C’pyr’t A. Loeffler
• Copyright, A. Loeffler, N.Y.
• COPYRIGHT A. LOEFFLER TOMKINSVILLE, N.Y.
• COPYRIGHT 1900, BY A. LOEFLER.)

August Loeffler (May 1865 to 1946) 90 St. Pauls Avenue, Tompkinsville, Richmond County, photographer. Loeffler published real photo postcards of his own work and contributed images to cards depicting the Catskills and New York City that were printed by other publishers including Langsdorf (qv), J Koehler (qv), and the Illustrated Post Card Co and Souvenir Post Card Co (qv). He also produced many stereoview cards of the Catskill Mountains. Loeffler’s father was emigre photographer John Loeffler, a leading photographer who had established a studio on Bay Street in Tompkinsville around 1860. His speciality was portrait photography, although he also made hundreds of stereophotographs of the Catskills in the 1870s and early 1880s while he served as the official photographer for the Mohonk Mountain Lodge. August succeeded his father in the family firm. He became a noted photographer of cityscapes, buildings, and maritime views, whose work was published in books, newspapers, magazines, and postcards in the late 1890s and early 1900s. On 2 December l884 Loeffler filed a patent application a new and useful improvement in instantaneous shutters for photograph-lenses.

Sources: americascoop.com; Langdon’s List of 19th & Early 20th Century Photographers

Christian Lohmann,

Kronberg in Taunus, Hesse, Germany

• Verlag Christian Lohmann, Buch-u.Papierhandlung, Cronberg

Christian Lohmann, bookbinding, book and paper shop, Cronberg. Lohmann founded his shop in 1895. They also sold hats, caps, cravats, umbrellas and sticks, fashion accessories for men, women and children, leather goods, cigars, cigarettes, tobacco, declaring Only first quality brands Most relevantly, they traded as postcard publishers and in souvenirs of Cronberg.

Luigi Loir,

• LUIGI LOIR signature in the painting, the surname above the first name with the first initials intertwined.

Luigi Aloys-François-Joseph Loir, (22 December 1845 to 9 February 1916) was a French painter, illustrator and lithographer. His parents were the valet and housekeeper of the French royal family in exile in Austria. Loir moved with his family and the Bourbons to the Duchy of Parma in 1847. In 1860 his family returned to Paris following the expulsion of the Bourbons from Parma, but Loir remained in the city, having had enrolled, at the age of eight, at the Accademia de Belle Arti. He eventually rejoined his family in Paris in 1863. There he studied with the decorative painter and set designer Jean Pastelot, making his Salon debut in 1865.

Loir’s artistic career was interrupted by distinguished military service during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. Thereafter, he painted mainly views of Paris, in all seasons and at different times of the day or night. Loir’s interest in the urban cityscape remained a constant of his career and it was as a painter of the modern urban Paris of the latter half of the 19th century that Loir was best known. In fact, it was said that he created Parisianism as a genre. Loir also worked as a commercial graphic artist and illustrator, theatrical and poster designer, book illustrator and lithographer. He continued to exhibit at the Salons until 1914, also winning a gold medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1889. Awarded the Legion d’Honeur in 1898, Loir was commissioned to design the cover of the official catalogue of the Exposition Universelle of 1900. A member of both the Société des Aquarellistes and the Société de Peintres-Lithographes, as well as a jury member of the Société des Artistes Français and the Société des Arts Décoratifs, Loir rose to a position of some prominence in the Parisian art world. The Tzarina bought one of his work and paintings by Loir are today in the Musée d’Orsay among others. My undivided-backs of major Paris sights were issued by P.G. Huardel & Co of London (qv).

Source: Picture Postcard Artists Landscapes, Animals and Characters Tonie & Valmai Holt 1984 Longman; Stephen Ongpin Fine Art; wikipedia

Gustave Loireau

Beaune, Cote-d’Or, France

• G. Loireau, libraire a Beaune

Gustave Loireau, bookseller and publisher, 4 rue Maufoux, Beaune published non-fiction books between at least 1896 and 1910. Loireau’s output included four editions of Alfred Contour’s Le Cuisinier Bourguignon: Nouveau Livre de Cuisine Pratique, a book of regional recipes. He published L’Abbe J. Maitre’s study of the prophecies of St. Malachy during and after the papacy of Alexander VII (1901) and other similar works. His postcard output was local photocards.

Paolo Lombardi, Siena, Italy

• Foto Lomardi – Siena.

Paolo Lombardi (1827 to 1890) photographer, Siena. Siena-born Lombardi started work as a professional photographer in 1849 and by 1860 had his own studio at Costarella from which he produced portraits, local artwork and landscapes of Siena and its surroundings. His work gave rise to a collection of over 3000 negatives.
He took part in the Sienese provincial exhibition of 1862, the Paris exhibition of 1867, the Vienna exhibition of 1873 and in 1887 the first photographic exhibition in Florence organized by Giacomo Brogi. In Florence he exhibited a reproduction of the floor of the Siena Cathedral in platinotypical plates, a hugely impressive and expensive exercise.
One of the most famous images of Giuseppe Garibaldi was made by Lombardi in August 1867. Garibaldi was taken to his studio in Costarella, a stone’s throw from Piazza del Campo, for the photo. The studio was located on the top floor of an ancient building, with steep stairs to get there. Garibaldi, suffering from the painful arthritis that had afflicted him for some time, was unable to climb the 110 steps and so his followers invented a sort of sedan chair to carry him up the stairs by applying poles to an armchair.
Lombardi’s son Galileo continued his father’s business, followed by his nephews. In 1914 the photographer Ghino Cesarini (1884 to 1959) took over from the Lombardis until 1935, when the Istituto Luce bought the Lombardi archive of 3745 plates.

Source: UNICOOPFIRENZE Discovering Siena

The London Stereoscopic Company

• PHOTO BY THE LONDON STEREOSCOPIC CO
• PHOTO LONDON STEREO RAPHAEL TUCK & SONS “REAL PHOTOGRAPH” POSTCARD SERIES 5057 “STAGE FAVOURITES”

The London Stereoscope Company was established in 1854, at 313 Oxford Street, with George Swan Nottage as Managing Partner. Their business was selling stereo views and viewers to the public, and they were leaders in a boom which swept England, Europe, and eventually the United States too, of stereo photographs of every conceivable subject, which, viewed by means of a stereoscope, presented scenes in life-like three dimensions. In February 1856, the London Stereoscopic Company (LSC) advertised in the Photographic Journal the largest collection in Europe, upwards of 10,000 stereo views. When the stereo card craze faded in the late 1860s, the company appears to have continued to do a healthy business, catering for the newer fashion for cartes de visite, but this too was fading by 1870. The company subsequently diversified into many areas with a global network of offices and staff photographers, selling and licensing images, cameras, equipment, papers and plates. This clearly included postcards. The company was finally dissolved in 1922 but has been revived in the hope of publishing stereo cards again: londonstereo.com. My photocards of London credit J. J. Keliher & Co (qv) for the typogravure. My photocard of Mr Martin Harvey was published by Tucks (qv) and credits London Stereo for the photograph.

J J Longhurst

Newcastle-upon-Tyne, England

• Longhurst, Society Printer, Newcastle

Joseph J. Longhurst, 64 Grey Street Newcastle, fine art dealers. De La Rue made the Longhurst pen specially for the firm.

Roy Creassy Longhurst (1888 to March 1918) joined his father’s business when he left the Royal Grammar School in Jesmond, Newcastle upon Tyne in 1901. He married Mary Robina Burns in Spring, 1915. They lived at 11 Queens Gardens, Benton, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Roy was commissioned from the University Officers’ Training Corps a few months after he joined in August 1914 into the Northumberland Fusiliers, 23rd Battalion. He was promoted to Captain while undergoing preliminary training at Alnwick, and went to the Western Front in January 1916. He was engaged in the heavy fighting at Arras, Albert, and La Boisselle. He was gazetted Major on the field, and subsequently Acting Lieutenant-Colonel. He was mentioned in Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig’s despatch of 13th November, 1916, and during his Colonel’s illness was personally complimented again by Sir Douglas for his work.

In October 1917, he was granted six months’ leave of absence in England and appointed Commandant of the Training School for the Durham Auxiliary Volunteer Forces, being attached to the Northumberland Fusiliers, 3rd Battalion. On Friday 8th March 1918, while on military service at home, Roy was accidentally killed when he crashed his motorcycle into a tram car on the Benton Road, Newcastle upon Tyne, during a snowstorm at around 1.25pm. He was taken for treatment to the 1st Northern General Hospital, which was based on the premises of Armstrong College. He died from his injuries a week later only weeks before his thirtieth birthday.

Sources: Universities at War; National Archives

Not to be confused with: British landscape painter Joseph Longhurst (3 April 1874 to 27 July 1922)

Antoni López Benturas

Barcelona, Spain

• Antonio Lopez, Editor, Barcelona
• ANTONIO LOPEZ, EDITOR, BARCELONA

Antoni López i Benturas (1861 to 19 October 1931) was a Catalan bookseller and publisher. He was the son of the bookseller Innocenci López i Bernagossi. Lopez inherited the Spanish bookshop his father had started in 1855 and there continued to publish books and magazines including La Campana de Gràcia and L’Esquella de la Torratxa.

Like most of the weekly newspapers of the López family in Catalan La Campana de Gràcia was loved by its loyal readers and hated by many – especially for anticlerical campaigns – during the 64 years that it was published. Lopez’ famous bookshop at 20 Rambla del Mig, was a cradle of the Catalan satirical press, especially La Campana de Gràcia and L’Esquella de la Torratxa. The absolute punctuality of the appearance of the weekly magazines and their focus on events in Barcelona were the two concerns and the pride of López Benturas until his death. López Benturas produced Republic, the Weekly of Republican Intelligence, four pages in five columns in Catalan and Spanish for ten cents. It advocated the unity of all Republican supporters.

López Benturas was a colourful character; a man of culinary skill, his speciality was cod with ratatouille.

López Benturas kept a rudimentary and primitive accounting that only he understood. In a notebook he marked with blue or red crosses what he had to collect or pay. This allowed him, with very few accounting staff, to solve all the problems of his business. Things were going well for him and at the end of the year he warned all his creditors to go and collect what he owed them, he paid all his debts and without taking into account the existence of books, facilities or anything that constitutes the ‘asset of a company. He considered profit all the money left over. He was able to do this while the business was on wheels, but when the first European war broke out everything changed.

Lopez Benturas’ style as a parent led his children to emancipate themselves from his little tyrannies. But his son Antoni López Llausàs did join the business. Lopez Benturas never thought to boost revenue by advertisements in the magazines. His son proposed advertising which was a sufficient success to fund his wedding.

López Benturas died after a long illness at his home on Avenida de la República Argentina in Barcelona. His funeral procession was led by the mayor of the city, Dr. Jaume Aguadé.

Source: MEMÒRIES DE LA FAMILIA LLETGET LÓPEZ del 1872 al 1942 Isabel Lletget López

This card: Barcelona a Prim is a sculptural monument located in the Parque de la Ciudadela de Barcelona, in the Ciutat Vella district . It was created in 1887 to an architectural design by Josep Fontserè, with the sculptural work by Lluís Puiggener . The original work was destroyed in 1936, and replaced in 1948 by one made by Frederic Marès . The monument is dedicated to the Catalan military and politician Juan Prim y Prats (1814 to 1870), President of the Council of Ministers of Spain and one of the architects of the Revolution of 1868. Source: wikipedia

Löwenstein & Formstecher, Berlin

• O.P.F. Berlin
• OPF in a trefoil

Löwenstein & Formstecher were the business behind the Osnabrück Paper Factory which they used in marketing their postcards. Lea Formstecher of 2 Lankwitzstrasse SW (born Löwenstein 5 October 1833) married Jules Auguste Formstecher on 14 July 1858 in Munster Stadt, Westfalen, Germany and may have had something to do with this business though her dates are rather early for the postcard development.

Lowman & Hanford Stationery & Printing Company, Seattle

• Lowman & Hanford S & P Co., Seattle

The Lowman & Hanford Stationery and Printing Company, later the Lowman & Hanford Company, was a printing company and retail stationery business operating in the Pioneer Square area of Seattle beginning around 1885. James Lowman and Clarence Hanford were business and civic leaders in early Seattle, each with ties to Seattle’s pioneer settlers. James D. Lowman (1856 to 1947) was born in Maryland and arrived in Seattle in 1877 at the invitation of his uncle, founding Seattle settler and sawmill owner Henry Yesler. Lowman worked as assistant wharf master on Yesler’s wharf for four years, using his savings to purchase a half interest in the book store owned by W.H. Pumphrey in 1881, and buying out his partner two years later. Clarence Hanford (1857 to 1920) was a Seattle native, the youngest son of Washington Territory pioneers. When Hanford was 13, he began learning the printing trade at the office of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which was published by his older brother, Thaddeus Hanford, eventually becoming foreman of the printing department. Hanford later bought out the job-printing department and established a job-printing office with a partner, J.H. McClair, in 1879, buying out McClair’s interest in 1881. Around 1885, J.D. Lowman and Clarence Hanford consolidated their stationery and printing businesses into the Lowman & Hanford Stationery and Printing Company, with Lowman as President and principal stockholder, and Hanford as vice-president and manager of the printing and bookmaking department. The firm advertised as booksellers, stationers, printers and binders but also sold typewriters, sewing machines, pianos and organs. The new company added large presses and printed all the city’s newspapers until their establishment was destroyed in the Great Fire of June 1889. The company returned to the burnt district after the fire, probably in temporary quarters at first, then building both the Lowman & Hanford Printing and Binding building (now the Washington Park Building) on Washington Street, along Railroad Avenue (now Alaskan Way), which they moved into in 1890, and the Lowman & Hanford building at 616 First Avenue, designed by Emil De Neuf. Within months of the fire, they had erected and operated in the first two floors of the latter building, continuing operations during construction of the upper floors. The four-storey building was completed in 1892, with three more upper floors added around 1902. Immediately next door, the 10-storey Lowman Building at 107 Cherry Street was completed in 1906. These two buildings, along with the Howard Building and the Pioneer Building, form the eastern edge of the area’s original public square. Judging by entries in city directories, the retail store appears to have gone out of business in the 1960s, with the printing company ceasing operations some years earlier.

Source: Archives West

Josef Löwy, Vienna

• Heliogr. v. J. Löwy, Wien Verlag der Guts – Dir. Der Brionischen Inseln
• J. LÖWY, WIEN, III. 1904

Josef Löwy (16 August 1834 to 24 March 1902) was a painter, publisher, manufacturer and court photographer. Bratislava-born Löwy moved to Vienna in 1848, where he learned to lithograph. He then studied in the painting class at the Vienna Academy. A camera received as a gift in 1855 led him to photography. In 1861 he joined the Photographic Society in Vienna and, in 1864, he participated in the First Photographic Exhibition in Vienna. From 1872 he was engaged in the light printing process and he founded a studio for industrial photography in the Landstraße district of Vienna. Landstraße is the 3rd district of Vienna and was created in 1850 by the incorporation of former suburbs.

In 1873 Löwy became a member of the Viennese Photographers Association, which was founded on the occasion of that year’s Vienna World Fair. This had the concession for the production of pictures in the exhibition for which Lowy was appointed court photographer. The main topics of his photography were portraits, Viennese architecture, art and nude photography. His company was continued by his widow Mathilde Löwy and taken over in 1908 by his nephew Gustav Löwy under the name Kunstanstalt J. Löwy.

Sources: wikipedia; Wien Geschichte Wiki

Hermann Ludewig, Leipzig

• Kunstanstalt Hermann Ludewig, Leipzig-R

Otto Robert Hermann, printer, 29 Thalstrasse, Leipzig. Ludewig published postcards from the early Gruss aus style. Ludewig was in business before 1900 and used both processes, letterpress and lithography, he appears to have avoided the typical, popular then chromolitho “Greetings from…” cards. The business moved 50 Schoenbachstrasse on 29 October 1906 where from May 1907 the postcard publisher Trinks & Co. also was. Ludewig specialised almost entirely on picture postcard printing. Some of his undivided-backs boasted Autocolor. He is said to have employed up to 100 people during the boom years but by late 1910 it had dropped to 60 to 70. In 1924 the business was taken over by well known local printing company Guenther, Kirstein and Wendler. Both firms were now at 50 Schoenbachstrasse and the business continued under the name Hermann Ludewig. Besides picture postcards, the company concentrated on catalogue and colour printing in general.

Source: THE POSTCARD ALBUM

Ludwigsohn Freres, Istanbul

• Ludwigsohn Freres, Place Karakeuy 21, Constantinople

Ludwigsohn Freres, postcard publishers, 21 Place Karakeuy, Constantinople, published topographical photo-cards into the divided-back era. Jacques and A Ludwigsohn also published postcards from the same address in their own names. Jacques Ludwigsohn published an album of 36 photos of Constantinople with captions in three languages. Many of their cards were produced by Mehner and Maas of Leipzig (qv). About 1909, the company was one of the postcard manufacturers that joined the price cartel Neue Bromsilber Convention (NBC) with the aim to have guaranteed minimum prices and fixed terms and conditions to avoid ruinous competition. The cartel continued until the early 1930s. Its president was Heinrich Ross from Rotograph Bromsilberdruck GmbH, Berlin.

Sources: Dumbarton Oaks; Mavi Boncuk Cornucopia of Ottomania and Turcomania

This card: The Fountain of Sultan Ahmed III is a fountain in a Turkish rococo structure in the great square in front of the Imperial Gate of Topkapı Palace in Istanbul. It was built under Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III in 1728, in the style of the Tulip period. It was a social centre and gathering place during the Ottoman period of Constantinople. Source: wikipedia

Solveig Lund, Oslo, Norway

• Solveig Lund.
• Solveig Lund Eneret 1902.

Solveig Lund (1869 to 1943) Norwegian photographer. Lund trained as a photographer in Copenhagen, where she studied with photographer Jens Petersen. She then established a studio in Moss in 1892, and, later, in Kristiania (now Oslo) 63 kilometres to the north where at one point she had 3 different studios at the same time. Lund took many glass plate negatives of women in national costumes, both studio portraits and outdoors photos. She produced hand-coloured cabinet cards and, later, postcards. Lund’s photographic studio closed in 1906 and after this she limited the business to colouring photographs and postcards based on her previous glass plate negatives. She left an endowment for worn housewives.

Source: Norsk Folk Museum

This card: This is a much-reproduced image of an ice tunnel. At the former road over Dyrskar, one of the oldest road tunnels in Norway, the Old Dyrskartunnel was opened in 1900.

Luray Caverns, Virginia, USA

• THE BEAUTIFUL CAVERNS OF LURAY, VA.

Luray Caverns, originally called Luray Cave, is a cave just west of Luray, which has drawn many visitors since its discovery in 1878. Although known to Native Americans, Luray Caverns was discovered by Euro-Americans on 13 August 1878, by five local men. The cavern system is generously adorned with speleothems such as columns, mud flows, stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone, and mirrored pools. The caverns are perhaps best known for the Great Stalacpipe Organ, a lithophone made from solenoid-fired strikers that tap stalactites of various sizes to produce tones similar to those of xylophones, tuning forks, or bells.

A Smithsonian Institution report of July 13 and 14, 1880, concluded: “[I]t is safe to say that there is probably no other cave in the world more completely and profusely decorated with stalactite and stalagmite ornamentation than that of Luray.”

Sam Buracker of Luray owned the land on which the cavern entrance was found. Because of uncollected debts, a court-ordered auction of all his land was held on 14 September 1878. Three of the men who had found the cave purchased the cave tract, but kept their discovery secret until after the sale. Because the true value of the property was not realized until after the purchase, legal wrangling ensued for the next two years with attempts to prove fraud and decide rightful ownership. In April 1881, the Supreme Court of Virginia nullified the purchase by the cave discoverers.

William T. Biedler of Baltimore (Buracker’s in-law and major creditor) then sold the property to The Luray Cave and Hotel Company, a subsidiary of the Shenandoah Railroad Company. Despite the legal disputes, rumours of the caverns’ impressive formations spread quickly. Professor Jerome J. Collins, the Arctic explorer, postponed his departure on an ill-fated North Pole expedition to visit the caverns. The Smithsonian Institution sent a delegation of nine scientists to investigate. The next edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica devoted an unprecedented page and a half to the cave’s wonders and Alexander J. Brand, Jr., a correspondent for the New York Times, was the first professional travel writer to visit and popularize the caverns.

In 1901, the cool, supposedly pure air of Luray Caverns was forced through the rooms of the Limair Sanatorium, erected on the summit of Cave Hill by Colonel Theodore Clay Northcott (7 September 1844 to 6 July 1941). The Colonel billed the sanatorium as the first air-conditioned home in the United States. In summer, the interior of the house was kept at a cool and comfortable 70 °F (21 °C). Northcott’s system could change out the air through the entire house about every four minutes.

When Colonel Northcott turned 95 the local newspaper noted him as the county’s only survivor of the Union in the Civil War as well as the first man in the world to have air-conditioned his own home.

The Luray Caverns Corporation, which was chartered by Northcott, purchased the caverns in February 1905 and continues to hold the property today. This card was postally used in August 1905, a date which makes it difficult to know if it was published under the auspices of the Company or the Corporation.

In March 2013 Family Business Magazine reported that the six Graves siblings who own Luray Caverns in northern Virginia are fighting over money and control. The fourth-generation siblings, Colonel Northcott’s great-grandchildren have been in near-constant litigation for most of the past 10 years. At that time, the Caverns were the third most-visited cave in the US, worth about $20 million.

Sources: wikipedia; Family Business Magazine

This card features a joke dating from twenty or more years earlier that became popular in the US around 1905-06. It gave rise to a spate of merchandise and recordings featuring The Whole Dam Family — a film, a record, many postcards, some with very nice cartoon art. The wordplay, in which references are made to the Dam father, the Dam housekeeper and so on, was somewhat risque in a day when even a “drat” was strong language.

Source: strippersguide.blogspot

Dalkeith, Midlothian, Scotland

• P & D LYLE, DALKEITH

P & D Lyle, publishers, stationers and printers, Dalkeith produced family pictures on postcards for use as Christmas cards. Professional Dalkeith photographer, Thomas Wallace is known to have supplied photographs for use on postcards. Between 1887 and 1894, Lyles printed and published Dalkeith District Directory and Household Almanac. In 1912 they published Around Dalkeith: And Camp Meg by John Charles Carrick.

Source: EdinPhoto

This card: The Laird o’ Cockpen is a song by Carolina Oliphant, Lady Nairne (1766 to 1845), which she contributed anonymously to The Scottish Minstrel, a six-volume collection of traditional Scottish songs published from 1821 to 1824. Much of the Scottish poetry in Nairne’s time was concerned with writing genteel verses for somewhat bawdier earlier songs, and The Laird o’ Cockpen is no exception, being set to the music of “O when she cam’ ben she bobbit”. Nairne’s family and upbringing was staunchly Jacobite. In that vein, the verse expresses something of the Jacobite distaste for the Whiggish displays and manners of the nouveau riche in post-Union Scotland. Sources: wikipedia; Scottish Poetry Library.

William Lyon, Glasgow, Scotland

• THE “PREMIER” PICTURE POST CARD The Premier Series
• TRADE MARK above quartered shield: L.G
• TRADE MARK above quartered shield: L.G THE “PREMIER” SERIES
• quartered shield: L.G

Founded by William Lyon. when he was only 23 years old, the company prospered and, by 1885, there was the shop at 385 Sauchiehall Street, a printing works at number 474 Sauchiehall Street and a retail branch in the Argyll Arcade. In 1898 a telephone was in use at the factory. He published Popular Songs Illustrated and Popular Novels Illustrated, the latter including Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in 1903.

The summer of 1901 saw the second of the great International Exhibitions at Kelvingrove. The catalogue for this exhibition lists Lyon as a guarantor to the organisers for the sum of £100 and he published many cards of the event. His business was then described as Manufacturers of Christmas, Menu, Visiting, Wedding and Invitation Cards, Ball Programmes, Pictorial Postcards, Fancy Stationery etc.(Wholesale & Export). Lyon’s British Patriotic series featured Kaiser Wilhelm I. Byatt says his undivided backs (1900 to 1902) were his finest work. Picture Postcard Annual 2020 records a card, a view of Dumbarton, postmarked 6 September 1898. Lyon published comic cards by the artist G.F.Christie (qv) and a Christmas card by Glasgow artist Broadfoot Carter (qv|).

Source: Picture Postcards and their Publishers Anthony Byatt 1978 Golden Age Postcard Books page 159; Glasgow History; Grace’s Guide To British Industrial History