Directory M

William G Macfarlane,

Toronto, Canada

• CANADIAN SOUVENIR CARDS W G MACFARLANE TORONTO
• W G Mac Farlane, Publisher, Toronto and Buffalo
• W G Mac Farlane, Publisher, Buffalo, N.Y., Toronto and Leipzig
• W. G. MAC FARLANE, TORONTO, BUFFALO & BERLIN
• PUBLISHED BY W. G. MAC FARLANE, TORONTO AND BUFFALO

William Godsoe MacFarlane was born and raised in New Brunswick, and by 1899, was located in Toronto where he set up an illustrated publishing business, which later grew to include postcard publishing. He published postcards between 1902 and 1910. MacFarlane was one of Canada’s most prolific publishers in the early part of the 20th century. The postcards of W.G. MacFarlane are extensively catalogued in the second edition of The W.G. MacFarlane Picture Postcard Handbook, 1902-1910 by Michael J. Smith. It shows the variety and quality of MacFarlane postcards from patriotic, heraldic & royalty postcards (39 series) to artist-signed, novelty and 52 special series.

His “Troilene” Ranching series featured the work of artist John Innes (qv). The new Troilene process was tri-colour reproductions from oil paintings. The first order of postcards, by Innes, arrived in August, 1906. Other series in Troilene, including those painted by his sister Sara Wendell (MacFarlane) Mitchell, followed.

Source: all my collections; Vintage Postcards

D Macropole, Kolkata, India

• Sole Agent Macropole Calcutta

D Macropole, tobacconists, Calcutta published photocards in the divided-back era.

D Macropole & Co. Ltd were named as a company assessed on an income of over Rs 10 lakhs in the Financial Year 1962-63, when they were at Kemani Building. A lakh is 100,000.

Mader & Springer

Isny im Allgäu, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.

• Franz Josef Huber, München

Mader & Springer, art publishers and printers, Isny.

The first photographer in Isny ​​was Gustav Friedrich Fleischer, by profession actually a painter and master saddler.  In 1866 he had a studio installed in his house.  Fleischer’s successor was Hieronimus Mader, who opened his photographic studio in 1873. In 1883 Mader patented a device for facilitating the exchanging of dry photographic plates in or outside the studio without the use of portable darkrooms. He also took his apparatus Invincibel, a collapsible-bellows camera of his own invention, on his photographic travels in the Alps. His cartes de cabinet boasted of a Diploma in Breslau in 1884.

Mader opened his printing company in 1895, just in time to produce Isny’s ​​first postcards. 

Source: Isny im Allgäu in alten Ansichten Karl-Friedrich Eisele

Isaac L. Maduro junior,

Colón, Panama

• J. L. Maduro jr, Photographer, Colon.

Isaac L. Maduro, Jr. was a photographer in Panama. He was the son of the photographer and map publisher, Isaac L. Maduro of Panama City. Maduro junior had a clothing and novelties store at 34–46 Fifth Street and Cathedral Plaza in Panama City that specialized in Fine Panama Hats, and Japanese and Chinese Silks as well as souvenirs and postal cards, novelties, notions etc. Many of Maduro junior’s images were turned into tinted collotype postcards that were first printed in Germany and later in the United States. Maduro Jr. is known for his large set of cards depicting the construction of the Panama Canal which were incorporated into his volume Souvenir of the Panama Canal before it opened. But his series depicting the firing-squad execution of the Panamanian hero Victoriano Lorenzo in 1903 is surely his most dramatic – a reminder that early photocards were as much about news as commemoration. Many of the cards on-line have I. L. Maduro jr credit lines, reflecting the extent to which I and J were often used interchangeably.

Source: Dumbarton Oaks

Magazzini Italiani di Cartoline

Milan, Italy

• Magazzini Italiani di Cartoline – Milano

Italiani Postcard Warehouses, postcard shop, 1 corso Vittorio Emanuele, Milan. The business also produced undivided-back photocards of Milan under the name Magazzini Italiani Cartoline Illustrate.

John Charles Maggs

• J C MAGGS

John Charles Maggs (1819 to 1896) Artist famous for his paintings of Old English Coaching Inns. A series of 16 numbered cards were published by Hancock & Corfield³.

Source: John Cowell Picture Postcard Monthly 339 page 18

Maglia, Milan

• CARTOLERIA MAGLIA MILANO – GALLERIA v. E.

Antonio Maglia, publisher and stationer, 20 Victor Emanuel II Gallery, Milan.

On 27 May 1869, Garibaldi wrote from Caprera to Maglia to thank him for the gift of the Collection of the Library of the Italian People, in the hope that Italian intellectualism can educate young people eradicating everything that stinks of necromancy.

Maglia seem to have been one of the first businesses in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, whose construction lasted from 1865 to 1877. In 1870 Maglia published Lorenzo Corvini’s speech read on the occasion of the solemn opening of studies in the Royal High School of Veterinary Medicine in Milan for the school year 1870-71. In 1881 Maglia published The Count of Chatillon an opera in four acts by Niccolo Massa and Rodolfo Paravicini.

By the age of postcards, the business seems to have been the partnership of Paglioni & dell’Acqua

This card: The postmark ESPOSIZIONE INTERNAT MILANO 1906 commemorates the Milan International world’s fair held in Milan in 1906 titled L’Esposizione Internazionale del Sempione. It covered 250 acres and received 4,012,776.

Alfred Mailick

• Mailick

Alfred Mailick (1869 to 1946) was an illustrator and painter of landscapes and animals who studied at the Academy in Dresden, Germany. Many of his postcards included a single person (usually in native costume) with a beautifully illustrated landscape as a backdrop. Carl Wiechmann (qv) published illustrations by Mailick with his VW monogram. In about 1905 he rang the changes by producing a series of cards with headless figures.

Source: Remember When Postcards Blog

Paul Maillan, Cannes, France

• P.L. Maillan, edit. Cannes
• PLM edit Cannes

Paul L Maillan (1847 to 1906) bookseller and publisher, Cannes. In 1878 Maillan’s Librairie Classique Francaise et Etrangere was at 34 rue du Port. Between 1875 and 1902, at 45 rue Centrale, Maillan published guidebooks and other books about the Cannes area. His undivided backs were local topographical photocards.

Charles Maindron,

St Cloud, Hauts-de-Seine France

• C.M. Edit a St.-Cloud

Charles Maindron (29 June 1861 to 15 July 1940) photographer and stationer, 8 rue Dailly, Saint-Cloud. In the last decade of the 19th century Parisian Maindron produced stereoscopes including one of workmen discovering buried skeletons. He also produced stereoscopes of the 1900 Paris Exposition. About 1893 a gelatin silver print of the ruins of Escalier d’Honneur at the Chateau de Saint-Cloud, one of ten images of the effects of the 1870 purchased by the Sevre Museum for whom he undertook a photographic commission in 1892. Between 1898 and 1914 Maindron was the photographer for the Metropolitan Technical Service and took the official photos of the construction of the metro first six lines of the Parisian metro, work that went on to cover their extensions to the suburbs in the 1930s. Early images were aristotypes, prints from a process using paper coated with silver chloride in gelatin.

Sevres Museum; Patrimonie Numerique; CPArama Forum

Maison Universelle, Nîmes, France

• Maison Universelle “Nouvelles Galeries” Nimes

Maison Universelle (universal house) department store on Boulevard Victor Hugo at the corner of Rue de la Madeleine, Nimes founded by Jean Marius Maubé. Maubé already had branches in Privas and Carpentras. In 1898 Maubé bought Nouvelles Galeries in Avignon and turned it into a Maison Universelle. Between 1888 and 1897 he also had a branch in Valence a few kilometers to the north.

Between Summer 1897 and early 1902, the Nimes store was the focus of industrial action for Sunday rest, employees seeking the same advances as their comrades in Marseilles, Bordeaux, Limoges, Perpignan and other cities of the importance of Nîmes had achieved. A commission was appointed to meet the trading bosses with a view to reaching an agreement on the closing of stores on Sunday afternoons. Some readily agreed but Maubé decided to open. That Sunday, demonstrators entered the store and circulated without buying, watched by a huge crowd who come for the spectacle. After an hour, Maubé closed the store.

On 11 August 1901, 1,200 demonstrators gathered in front of the establishment carrying signs with the inscription “Do not buy on Sunday”. The store closed around 10:00 a.m. but the manager told the demonstrators that it would open the following Thursday, a public holiday and the following Sundays. On Sunday 18 August about 3,000 demonstrators and people of Nîmes were dispersed by gendarmes and police from the front of La Maison Universelle. Clashes took place and newspapers spoke of a city under siege. At at demonstration the next day Maubé took a pistol out of his pocket and pretended to use it against the demonstrators entering his store. The action ran into 1902 but ended on 9 February.

Source: Quand notre histoire rencontre le présent

This card: The Arena of Nîmes was built in about 100 AD just a few years after the Colosseum in Rome. It is one of the best preserved amphitheatres from the Roman world. Although the monument is currently undergoing a massive 25-year restoration programme that began in 2009, visitors are still able to tour the interior. Source: Archaeology Travel

Malcuit, Paris

• C.M.
• C.M. Paris

C. Malcuit, 3 rue Bourdaloue, Paris, photographer who produced many photocards, most often of exceptional quality. He went on to publish photographs of early flight in divided-backs and the January 1910 flood. EM also indicates a card by a member of the Malcuit family of 41, Faubourg du Temple and Paris also features in these cards.

Source: CPArama

Alfred Mallett

Christchurch, Hampshire, England

• Mallet Photo Peacock Brand

Alfred Mallett, (1857 to 1941) photographer, 19 High Street, Christchurch, Hampshire. Mallett produced cartes de cabinet from his portrait studio. Mallett was not only a photographer, but also an artist and a musician. At one stage, Mallett took on a young apprentice, Tom Brown, whom he taught photography and how to play the violin after which Brown left photography and became a professional musician.

Mallett was successful in the High Street and bought a row of five cottages for a bigger studio in Church Street paying £160 at auction. One of the sitting tenant wouldn’t leave and remained in bed as his home was demolished about him. Mallett remained in Christchurch for 23 years and his studio in Church Street housed the largest collection of local views in the district. He was often summoned to photograph visiting royalty at Highcliffe Castle, including the Queen of Sweden, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, and a number of German princes.

Source: Our Past in the Picture 1966

Milan Mandich, Trieste, Italy

• MM Triest
• Stabilimento editore Milan Mandich Trieste

Based in Trieste when it belonged to Austria, Mandich published cards into the divided-back era and was still publishing up to WWII. Photographs of Trieste and its port were a staple feature.

In 177 BC, the Port of Trieste was under Roman rule. After Rome fell, the Port of Trieste was given independence in 948 AD by King Lothar II of Italy. Venetians captured the Port of Trieste in 1202, although it continued to push for autonomy. In 1382, the Port of Trieste placed itself under the protection of Leopold III (of Habsburg). This overlordship eventually made the Port of Trieste an Austrian possession.

In 1719, Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI proclaimed the Port of Trieste to be an Imperial Free Port when about 5700 people lived there. By 1891 when it lost that status, 156 thousand people lived in the Port of Trieste. Between the early 18th and middle 19th Centuries, the Port of Trieste was a giant market. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, who succeeded Charles VI, extended exemptions for customs duties for all of the Port of Trieste, bringing many new residents to the Port of Trieste from Italy, Serbia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Greece and including many Jews. A law was passed granting freedom of religion, ownership of property, and the right to negotiate. By the middle 1800s, it became necessary to expand the Port of Trieste’s infrastructure and the local rail network.

In 1857, the Southern (Sűdbahn) Railway began operations, linking the Port of Trieste with Vienna, Budapest, and many other Eastern European cities. The railway was critical to the design of the port. In 1868, the commercial Port of Trieste began to develop.

With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and competition from northern ports, construction of the Old Port (Porto Vecchio) was begun. In the northern area of today’s port, sea infrastructures and the outer breakwater were built between 1863 and 1883. In 1871, a new monthly service with Mumbai started operating. Building of the Porto Nuovo began in the early 20th Century to meet increasing demands for trade with the Middle and Far East through the Suez Canal.

Source: World Port Source

Franz Manger, Cologne, Germany

• F.M.K.

Franz Manger, German printer, published view-cards and photo-albums of Germany and undivided and divided back cards and relief cards some of which were not postcards. The postcards included a series of German rustic scenes some with titles in English and German. They also published the work of the illustrator Bisschop in wood-effect frames.

Henri Manuel

• Manuel VP
• H. Manuel
• H. MANUEL Paris
• H. MANUEL S.I.P.

Henri Manuel (24 April 1874 to 11 September 1947) French portrait photographer. In 1900, with his second brother, Gaston, Manuel opened a studio specialising in the portrait of the personalities of the political and artistic worlds. Early on, G. Piprot (qv) published a series of his posed photographs under the title Napoleon Intime. Societe Industrielle de Photographie also published his photos but others were published with only the photographer’s name in the photograph.

Georges Marchand,

Dieppe, Seine-Maritime, France

• G.M.

Georges Marchand (24 April 1876 to 1964) was a photographer-editor-printer in Dieppe. He began practising photography with the typo-photographic process. His first photographs were published in postcards by his mother (below) and between 1900 and 1912 he published about 2000 different postcards of the Seine Maritime and especially of Dieppe. His view of the lighthouse of Dieppe in a storm had a print run of 100,000. His postcards are all numbered and signed, albeit some only by his initials.

Madame Marchand, Dieppe, France

• Vve*- Ed. M.

* widow

Madame Marchand, of Dieppe, mother of Georges Marchand (above) who published cards of his first 165 photographs including DIEPPE. – La jetée un jour de tempete (The pier on a stormy day) which went on to sell a hundred thousand copies⁹.

Source: wikipedia: Éditeurs français de cartes postales

Marco Marcovici, Brussels, Belgium

• M. Marcovici, Edit Pl. Martyrs, Brux

Marco Marcovici (1873 to 1938) Place Martyrs, Brussels. From 1901 until his death, Marcovici worked in Brussels as a publisher of tourist travel guides, albums and booklets and thousands of postcards, with images from all over Belgium. Many publications were about events, such as the World Exhibitions in (1905) Brussels (1910) and Ghent (1913), patriotic cards throughout WWI and photos of the aftermath between the wars.

Source: Armee Belge Belgisch Leger; ETWIE

Max Marcus, Berlin

• VERLAG MAX MARCUS, BERLIN W.

Max Marcus, postcard publisher, Berlin. In 1877 Marcus published The Sunbeam or The Song of the Cheese a book of humorous illustrations by Henry Albrecht. He published a number of topical cards such as his 1898 cards of prominent socialites and a trained crow marching in parade in front of the Kaiser. His output also had a distinct political bent: In 1898 he produced a number of cards about the Dreyfus Affair and was part of that verbal war by postcard between France and Germany. Thereafter he published the popular anti-semitic song The little Cohn on postcards. In 1905 Marcus published a card of a photograph of August Bebel framed by 7 members of the Social Democratic Party of Germany of which Bebel was chairman from 1892 until his death in 1913.

Source: wikipedia Der kleine Cohn

J. Maréchal-Ory, Liège, Belgium

• Edit. J. Maréchal-Ory, Liège

Edit. J. Maréchal-Ory, printer, Liège. On 1 August 1895, Maréchal-Ory and his wife bought the book and stationery store located at Passage Lemonnier from Charles-Auguste Desoer. Brussels postcard publisher Nels included a photograph of the premises in his own catalogue. Maréchal-Ory published local topographical photo-cards.

Marion, Paris and London

• MARION, imp*., Paris
• W. & D. DOWNEY, PHOTO MARION & CO., LTD., PUBS.

* Imprimeurs – printers

Marion, printers, Paris and London, printed the card and supplied the cardstock to the photographer of many Victorian photographs. The printer’s name Marion Imp Paris can be found on cards from all over the world, showing that their business was shipping cardstock worldwide and the same designs, so far they have been found from: India, Burma, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Gibraltar¹⁴. The wording on my card of an unlabelled photo-card of Falkland Palace in Fife is in the stamp box, suggesting that Marion only supplied the card. In contrast, Marion seems to have published this Royal photo by Downey (qv).

Source: Marion – Victorian Photograph Card Printers by Roger Vaughan;

This card: Alexandra of Denmark (1 December 1844 to 20 November 1925) was Queen of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions and Empress of India from 22 January 1901 to 6 May 1910 as the wife of King-Emperor Edward VII.

Constant Marmillod

Montreux, Switzerland

• Marmillod, Montreux
• C. Marmillod, Montreux

Constant Marmillod, photographer, Montreux took over the photographic studio of Paul Guinard-Forcard in La Rouvenaz and was publishing in his own name by 1890. As well as his work as a studio photographer, he edited photographs of landscapes. He continued to publish numbered topographical cards into the divided-back era.

Source: fotoCH

This card: The Grand Hotel Rochers de Naye was constructed in 1892 – 93. In 1906 it could only accommodate the first ninety of a group of Italian visitors with the rest having to go to Caux. In summer, the house is surrounded by an alpine garden with mountain flowers. In winter, the ski slopes start directly in front of the hotel and it is possible to ski between the Rochers-de-Naye and the Dent de Jaman Mountains.

Marques & Fiorillo, Aswan, Egypt

• Marques & Fiorillo, Editors, photographers, Assouan.

Marques & Fiorillo, publishers and photographers, Aswan. Luigi Fiorillo (1847 to 1898) was an Italian photographer, active in the Middle East and parts of Africa. He arrived in North Africa in about 1870 and worked in Egypt (where he opened a studio in Alexandria), Algeria, Palestine and then in Eritrea.

In the 1870s and 80s he participated in photographic exhibitions in in Naples, Paris, Ottawa and Boston. In 1877 he took part in an expedition of the Italian Geographical Society to East Africa. From the 1890s he was given the title of “photographe de Son Altesse le Prince Mohammed Toussoun Pasha“, (photographer to His Highness, Prince Mohammed Toussoun Pasha).

In 1881 he made a report on the revolt of the Egyptian army led by Ahmed ʻUrabi, while the following year he photographed the effects of the British naval Bombardment of Alexandria, which took place on 11 July during the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882.

In 1890 Fiorillo entered into partnership with A. Marques, changing the name of his studio to “Marques & Fiorillo photographers & editors, Assuan”.

It became a leading company for the production of postcards in Egypt with many photographs reflecting aspects of British social life in Egypt. Their work provides an important record of the construction work on the dam at Aswan, with great detail discernible in some of the larger pictures, particularly the island of Philae which was submerged by the completion and first heightening of the Aswan (Low) Dam.

Source: wikipedia: Luigi Fiorillo

This card shows the Temple of Kom Ombo near Aswan after it was cleared of the debris that had accumulated around it and completely restored in 1893 in a project conducted by French geologist and archaeologist Jacques de Morgan (1857 to 1924).

George Marsden & Son

Wirksworth, Derbyshire, England

• Marsden’s Series

George Marsden & Son (1834 to 1904) 20 Market Place, Wirksworth, Derbyshire. George Marsden started out as a clerk working with his father, an auctioneer at 2 St John Street. He later had his own business as a bookseller and stationer in the Market Place. Two separate businesses, Marsden the Auction and Marsden the Hardware faced each other across the Market Place in the centre of Wirksworth. There appears to be no connection between the people who ran the businesses except the surname. Hardware lasted for 220 years and Auction for more than 130 years – 1823 to 1960. When he died, George Marsden was described as stationer, an estate agent, a publisher (postcards) and a surveyor. Marsden published Derbyshire Artistic Series of local views using early colour printing techniques. In 1908 he published The Wirksworth Directory, an alphabetical list without occupations. Marsden served for a number of years as Churchwarden at St Mary’s Church and Chairman of the Restoration Committee and his letters to Sir George Gilbert Scott about the church restoration are on record.

Sources: The Dictionary of Picture Postcards in Britain 1894-1939 A W Coysh (Antique Collectors Club 1984); Discover Wirksworth; WIRKSWORTH Parish Records 1600-1900

This card: Pateley Bridge is a small market town in Nidderdale in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it lies on the River Nidd. It has the oldest sweet shop in the world. St. Mary’s Church is a beautiful historic site set in a wooded area overlooking Pateley Bridge. Now in ruins, it was the parish church of Pateley Bridge until 1827.

Ernest Marshall

Windsor, Berkshire, England

• Ernest Marshall, Windsor, Copyright

Ernest Marshall, (born 1866) bookseller, stationer, printer, Castle Hill and 7a, Peascod Street, Windsor.

In 1899, Marshall was listed as having the Royal Warrant under Printers, Publishers, and Printsellers. The next year, he published The Royal album of Windsor views and from 1900 he published various editions of Marshall’s Royal Windsor Guide; A Comprehensive History and Description of the Castle. His 1900 book Photographic Views of Windsor was photographed and printed by Valentine & Sons Ltd. of Dundee for him.

The Windsor and Eton Express of 17 November 1906 recorded that in the Masonic Hall on Tuesday last, the Worshipful Master Bro. S. W. Bowles, on behalf of the brethren, presented Bro. Ernest Marshall with a very handsome engraved solid silver salver. In 1911, Marshall was the local contact for the Religious Tract Society.

Charles Martin, London

• Charles Martin, London

Charles Martin, 39 Aldermanbury, London EC published views of London and its suburbs especially the suburban railway stations. A few early cards are of the Sussex coast. Many of his cards were printed in Prussia. He also published facsims of paintings by Jotter. A W Coysh in his Dictionary of Picture Postcards in Britain 1894 – 1939 gives his dates of activity as 1903 to 1912, latterly in Ponders Green.

Edward Martin

Melbourne, Derby, England

• E. MARTIN’S MELBOURNE HALL GARDENS VIEWS.

Edward Martin, photographer, Ashby Road, Melbourne, Derby. Martin was born in 1851 at Derby, son of William Martin, a brewer originally from Spretton in Northamptonshire. In 1881, he was working as a footman, and living with his parents at 32 Noel Street, Derby St. Werburgh. By April 1891, he had moved to Melbourne, where he lived on Ashby Road and worked as a photographer. He operated his studio in Melbourne from at least 1891 until 1912. Adamson (1997) lists him having additional premises at Potter street, Melbourne in 1900. He was a prolific photographer of local places of interest which he sold in postcard form in and around Melbourne in local shops as well as from his studio. Many of his original glass plates have survived and are held in the archives at Derbyshire Record Office, Matlock. Many of his photographs are owned by the National Trust, notably of the Crewe family at Calke Abbey.

Sources: Picture the Past; Derbyshire Photographers’ Profiles by Brett Payne

This card: A major feature of the garden of Melbourne Hall is the wrought iron arbour known as the ‘Birdcage’ which was made by the celebrated ironsmith Robert Bakewell in 1706 to 1708 for £120. It was made in the basement of ‘Stone House’, which still stands on the South side of the parish church. The arbour made Bakewell famous, but its manufacture left him penniless. In form, it is derived from wooden arbours common in French gardens. Bakewell went on to produce famous ironwork for many important buildings. Two other examples nearby are the chancel screens in Derby Cathedral and Staunton Harold Church. Source: Melbourne Hall

Friedrich Martin

Erfurt, Thuringa, Germany

• Friedr. Martins Kunstverlag Erfurt.

Friedrich Martin, art publisher, Erfurt, published artist-drawn cards.

Hermann Martin

Nuremberg, Bavaria, Germany

• 1819 HERMANN MARTIN, KUNSTVERLAG, NÜRNBERG 1904
• Hermann Martin, Kunstverlag, Nürnberg 1899
• KUNSTVERLAG HERMANN MARTIN, NÜRNBERG. NEUE SERIE NÜRNBERGER AQUARELLKARTEN

Hermann Martin, photographer and art publisher, Nuremberg published local topographical photocards and artist-drawn images. The publisher’s name is preceded by the number of the card and followed by the year of publication. He also published Nürnberg. 12 Tafeln in Kupfertiefdruck (Nuremberg. 12 Plates In Copper Gravure) and other volumes of photographs of the area. More of his cards here.

P. Martin

Vaucluse, Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France

• P. Martin a Vaucluse

In the 1950s Maison Martin of Rue Carnot in Avignon in Vaucluse departement published a book: Notice on the Fountain of Vaucluse and its Surroundings and Abbreviated History on Petrarque. My card also features the Fountain of Vaucluse.

F. Martinez

Villagarcía de Arosa, Galicia, Spain

• Foto Martinez.

F. Martinez, photographer, Villagarcía de Arosa had died and his business been taken over by his widow and children before the postcard era. They carried on a studio business, specialising in portraits of children. The photographs they issued in the carte de cabinet format bore the wording Martinez Madrid. Madrid is more than 600 kilometers from Vilagarcía de Arosa, a Spanish municipality in the province of Pontevedra, Galicia. However, his postcards were undivided-backs of the municipality.

Maser & Leaf, Manchester, England

• Maser & Leaf, Manchester

Maser & Leaf, merchants, 71 Market Street, Manchester, published a tinted image of Llandudno Sands showing Llandudno Pier Pavilion Theatre, a Victorian seaside theatre in the holiday resort opened in September 1886. In similar cards of Bristol bridges they designed themselves as Postcard Publishers. In 1903 merchant Morris Maser was at 56 Devonshire Street HB.

Source: Wikipedia: Llandudno Pier Pavilion Theatre

Mason Brothers. & Company, Boston, Massachusetts, USA

• Mason Bros. & Co., Boston, Mass

Mason Brothers & Company, were publishers & music publishers at 154 Tremont Street Boston, Mass in the middle of the 19^th century. A company of the same name published topographicals of Massachusetts into the divided-back era.

Source: Directory of Booksellers, Stationers, Newsdealers, and Music Dealers and List of Libraries in the United States and Canada: Complete to November 1st, 1870 John Herbert Dingman

Frank H Mason

• FRANK H MASON

Frank Henry Mason (1 October 1875 to 24 February 1965), RBA, RI, RSMA was an artist best known for his maritime, shipping, coastal and harbour paintings, and as a creator of art deco travel and railway posters. His style is described as light impressionist and he was a founder member of the Staithes Art Club whose members are known today as the Staithes group of artists, or the Northern Impressionists. My card of his painting SCARBOROUGH, – A PEEP OUT OF THE HARBOUR was postally used in 1903 when the artist was 27.

Source: Wikipedia: Frank Henry Mason

Finch Mason

• FINCH MASON

George Finch Mason (1850 to 1915) was a sporting artist, author and illustrator, specialising in humorous studies and caricatures. His father was a schoolmaster at Eton and he was educated there in 1860 to 64. He contributed to several books including Humours of the Hunting Field (1886), Flowers of the Hunt (1889), The White Hart and other Stories(1891), The Run of the Season (1902), and Heroes and Heroines of the Grand National (1907 and 1911). He was a frequent contributor to many publications including The Sporting Times and Punch. His reputation was international; Reviewing a racing number of the Pall Mall Budget, the Dunedin Evening Star newspaper of Friday 11 January 1895 observed: Finch Mason’s finishes for the big [horse] races of 1894 would alone make the number worth buying to all sportsmen…

These Sporting Notions cards were published in 1903-4 by James Alderton & Company of London.

Source: James Alder Fine Art

Andrew Mather & Company, Hobart, Australia

• A MATHER & CO, HOBART

Mather postcards were published by Andrew Mather and Company, the firm originally established in 1849 under the name R. Andrew Mather or R.A. Mather. The proprietor of the firm in 1903 was Robert Mather junior, who most likely led involvement with the postcard business. In 1905, the company ran a large advertisement for their Book, Stationery and Fancy Department at 93-95 Liverpool Street. They advertised postcard albums; pictorial postcards embracing every possible subject; and Tasmanian View Postcards – We have just published a new series of coloured cards – They are real works of art and the price is only 7½d a set of 6 subjects – Post Office, Shot Tower, Macquarie Street, Hobart, Derwent (New Norfolk), Government House. Mather’s incursion into postcard publishing and selling was brief, perhaps 1903 to 1908. Before divided-back cards were allowed in 1905, they issued two series which are seen postmarked in 1904 and 1905. These two are quite different in style, one printed by halftone and the other by collotype.

Matot-Braine

Rheims, Marne, France

• Matot-Braine, Editeur, Reims

Matot-Braine, printer, publisher, bookseller 6 rue du Cadran Saint-Pierre, Reims. In 1857 Emile-Joseph Matot (12 December 1829 to 29 September 1874) started a paper, printing, book-binding and book shop in Reims. In 1858 he published his first almanac of the region. Matot married Emelie Octavie Braine. Their son Henri took over the direction of the business while son Jules (3 August 1865 to 25 February 1945) a keen photographer, pioneered the postcards until 1912 when he set up his own shop.

Reims, is one of the centres of champagne production. Many of the largest champagne-producing houses, known as les grandes marques, have their headquarters in Reims, and champagne ages in the many caves and tunnels under Reims, which form a sort of maze below the city. Carved from chalk, some of these passages date back to Roman times. Matot Braine published lierature relating to the Champagne industry for more than a century from 1873.

Members of the Matot family were active in the Reims Photographic Union (UPR); In 1906, a secret ballot allowed the admission of the first woman, Mrs. J. Matot, to the club committee with 2 votes more than the next candidate. In 1912 and 1913, the society presented two major exhibitions in an annex of the Matot Braine bookstore. Jules Matot was president for 18 years and took a series of views of the first destruction of the city and in particular the September 1914 fire in the cathedral. In 1916 he published an almanac of the first two years of the war in the region.

Meantime, the Matot Braine shop was damaged in the bombardment of Reims on 19 September 1914 and destroyed at the end of February 1915.

Such was the destruction of the war that it was not until the beginning of November 1920 that Matot and the secretary of the UPR were able to arrange to meet members and go to the society’s premises – of which there was nothing left. A provisional committee was appointed on January 15, 1921 and the first post-war general assembly was held on January 23, 1921.

In the 1930s, the Matot-Braine bookstore was rebuilt at the corner of rue du Cadran Saint-Pierre and Cours Langlet. The Librairie Matot Braine company was removed from the Reims Trade and Companies Register on 19 April 2012. However, the name lives on in the journal Petites Affiches Matot Braine which publishes official notices and announcements.

Frederic Auguste Bartholdi (1834 to 1904) created the Bartholdi Fountain for the 1876 International Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia. The Bartholdi Fountain, cast in Paris by A. Durenne, was painted to look like bronze and placed at a focal point near the main entrance of the Exhibition grounds in Fairmount Park. At the close of the Exhibition, the Bartholdi Fountain was purchased for $6,000 (half of its estimated value) by the United States government and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1877. When it was created, the fountain fused modern gas-lighting and cast-iron technologies with water and was intended to allegorically represent Light and Water. Bartholdi saw this work as symbolically appropriate for the modern city, and he hoped that many cities throughout the country would purchase castings. Actually only Reims acquired one in 1885, and it is no longer extant. The gas lamps made the fountain a popular attraction since it was one of the first monuments in the city of Washington to be brightly illuminated at night. Bartholdi also designed the Statue of Liberty in New York harbour and was working on that projec at the same time as he designed the fountain.

Source: ‘L’Imprimerie Matot-Braine photographie par Jules Matot Daniel Tant

Emil Maurach, Riga, Latvia

• Emil Maurach, Buch-, Kunst, u. Musikalienhandlg., Riga, Scheunenstr. 9

Emil Alexander Eberhard Maurach, (21 October 1867 to 5 July 1931) book-, art- and music-shop owner and publisher, 9 Scheunenstrasse, Riga. He tooke over this business from G. Engelmann. He sold enamel pictures and made frames.

Maurach published artist-drawn topographicals of Riga, then part of the Russian empire. Obpacher of Munich and Hagelberg of Berlin designed and lithographed Gruss aus cards for him. He also sold topical photocards such as this one including cards showing the arrest of a revolutionary and other interactions with the authorities at the time of the 1905 Russian revolution. Maurach stamped cards published by others with his details when selling them.

In the 1914 Address book of the German book trade Maurach featured in the music and art trade and as a lending library. He seems to have been a character of Riga, characteristically walking with a cane.

Auguste Maure, Biskra, Algeria

• Maure, phot.,Biskra

Auguste Maure, (1840 to 1907) photographer, Biskra. Marseille-born Maure was an orientalist photographer who lived in Biskra from 1855 to his death. He created the Photographie Saharienne studio in 1860, the first photography studio in south Algeria. Biskra is the queen of oases, a place where many artists (writers, painters and photographers) went in the 19th century to experience the climate, luminosity and landscapes of Sahara desert. About 20 kilometers from Biskra, is the tomb and mosque of an Arab General, Uqba Ibn Nafaa, who brought Islam to Algeria and who died there in an ambush in 683 AD. Maure’s cards included La grande priere – photocards of open-air Islamic prayer.

Joao Mayer junior

Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

• Joao Mayer junior

Joao Mayer junior, (7 May 1858 to 31 October 1928) stationer and bookseller, Rua Marechal Floriano, Porto Alegre. Porto Alegre is the capital and largest city of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul. The city is the southernmost capital city of a Brazilian state.

Mayer was the son of one of three German immigrants of the same name who arrived unmarried in São Leopoldo in the year 1827 or 1829. Mayer was born in Porto Alegre nearby and set up his business in 1888. This card shows the shop he had built in 1895. He was joined by Jacob Selbach junior in 1903, forming the firm Selbach & Mayer. Selbach died in 1907, and was succeeded by his son Affonso. Mayer retired in July 1910.

The bookstore supplied school books, office and school equipment, items for Catholic worship, and sewing machines and accessories. There was also a factory, producing boxes and binding books and all powered by electric power. At one point the business employed 35, 21 men and 14 women. Many of their goods were imported from Europe. They were widely sold in Brazil by travelling salesmen.

Sources: Alemães no RS: os Mayer Diego de Leão Pufal; Nossa Porto Alegre

McIntire & Company

Wilmington, Delaware, USA

• McINTIRE AND COMPANY, Wilmington, Del.

McIntire & Company, Wilmington, Delaware published local topographical photocards.

This card: Caesar Rodney (7 October 1728 to 26 June 1784) was an American Founding Father, lawyer, and politician from St. Jones Neck in Dover Hundred, Kent County, Delaware. He was an officer of the Delaware militia during the French and Indian War and the American Revolution, a Continental Congressman from Delaware, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and President of Delaware during most of the American Revolution.

In June 2020 Wilmington city officials removed a bronze statue of Rodney, who owned slaves, on a horse which, for nearly a century had towered over a square in the heart of downtown named for him. It commemorates his famous 80-mile ride to Philadelphia in 1776 to cast the deciding vote for the Declaration of Independence on behalf of the 13 American colonies breaking away from British rule. The removal was to prevent it from potential damage, in the wake of the protests for racial justice, spurring from George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer in May 2020 and to foster what Mayor Mike Purzycki called “an overdue discussion about the public display of historical figures and events.”

Sources: wikipedia WHYY PBS

G. L. McKeggie, Aberdeen, Scotland

G. L. McKeggie, Aberdeen.

G. L. McKeggie, newsagent, 84 Union Grove, Aberdeen in 1900 to 1904 directories and listed as a printer at 70 Great Western Road in 1908. McKeggie is listed as the author of Gleanings from the history of Beauly Priory among the publications of The Aberdeen Ecclesiological Society in 1890 to 1893. Ecclesiology is the study of the Christian Church.

Source: A catalogue of the publications of Scottish historical and kindred clubs and societies, and of the volumes relative to Scottish history issued by His Majesty’s Stationery office, 1780-1908;

William McKinley

• Wm. McKINLEY.

William McKinley ( 29 January 1843 to 14 September 1901) was the 25th president of the United States, serving from 1897 until his assassination in 1901.

A Republican, McKinley was the last president to have served in the American Civil War; he was the only one to begin his service as an enlisted man. After the war, he settled in Canton, Ohio, where he practiced law and married Ida Saxton. In 1876, McKinley was elected to Congress, where he became the Republican Party’s expert on the protective tariff, which he promised would bring prosperity. He secured the Republican nomination for president in 1896 amid a deep economic depression. He defeated his Democratic rival William Jennings Bryan after a front porch campaign in which he advocated “sound money” (the gold standard unless altered by international agreement) and promised that high tariffs would restore prosperity.

McKinley defeated Bryan again in the 1900 presidential election in a campaign focused on imperialism, protectionism, and free silver. His achievements were cut short when he was fatally shot on 6 September 1901, by Leon Czolgosz, a second-generation Polish-American anarchist. McKinley died eight days later and was succeeded by Vice President Theodore Roosevelt.

Duplicating the campaign tactics of 1896, the Republicans spent several million dollars on 125 million campaign documents, including 21 million postcards such as this one and two million written inserts that were distributed to over 5,000 newspapers weekly. They also employed 600 speakers and poll watchers. As in 1896, McKinley stayed at home dispensing carefully written speeches, using the Front Porch style of campaign where the candidate largely does not travel around or otherwise actively campaign His running mate, Theodore Roosevelt, campaigned across the nation, condemning Bryan as a dangerous threat to America’s prosperity and status.
 
Sources: wikipedia : McKinley; William McKinley: Campaigns and Elections Lewis L Gould

McLeod & Young

Wairarapa, New Zealand

• McL. & Y. Academy Series. Photo by Winzenberg

McLeod & Young, booksellers and stationers, The Academy, Queen Street, Masterton. FWG McLeod was a keen musician and this played a significant part in the business; in 1904, they were agents for the Wellington Piano Company while in 1905, they were the address for music and singing teacher Mrs Shortland who taught vamping by a special method.

The business were regular advertisers in the local newspaper, The Wairarapa Age, not just the newly-received books they had for sale; In 1909, the shop was clearly something of a local hub, accepting laundry and selling tickets for events. Mr McLeod was a qualified piano tuner, wanting settlers to know that he would visit any district between Pahiatua and Martinborough.

However, by September that year, McLeod, been offered an appointment as conductor of an important band in New South Wales. The opening is such a lucrative one that Mr McLeod has decided to accept it, and to leave Masterton early in November. The business will be carried on as usual Mr Young, who has been able to make such arrangements as will facilitate Mr McLeod’s withdrawal from the firm.

Soon after the outbreak of WWI, the business advertised:

A NEW COLORED WAR MAP.
SPLENDIDLY COLOURED TOGETHER WITH A WAR MAP SUPPLEMENT.
VERY COMPLETE, Showing Railways,Rivers, Towns very clearly
THE CHEAPEST MAP ON THE MARKET.
1/3 EACH. POSTED Is 4d.
McLeod & Young,
“THE ACADEMY BOOKSELLERS & STATIONERS.
QUEEN STREET…….MASTERTON

6 October 1914 The Wairarapa Age

In 1918 they published NEW ZEALAND AT THE FRONT. A Splendid Volume. With 100 Colour and Black and White illustrations. 212 Pages (11 x 8 inches). Paper Covers, with Striking Picture Wrapper, 4s 6d. Contains Prose and Verse, Humorous, Crisp, Sparkling and Topical. Written and Illustrated by Men of the N.Z. Division at the Front.

Masterton is the largest town in the Wairarapa, a region separated from Wellington, 100 kilometres away, by the Rimutaka ranges. The town is the headquarters of the annual Golden Shears sheep-shearing competition.

McMillan

Aberdeen, Scotland

• McMillan, Aberdeen

May have been: James McMillan, bookseller, stationer and fancy goods merchant, 131 Rosemount Place, Aberdeen. McMillan lived at 34 Mile End Avenue in 1902 then 188 and 190 Mid Stocket Road in 1903 and 1904 respectively.

Megeath Stationery Company, Omaha, Nebraska, USA

• Megeath Stat. Co

Megeath Stationery Company, 1308 Farnam Street, Omaha. George Windsor Megeath (died 1 April 1931 aged 72) and his family lived 2137 South 33rd Street, Omaha. According to an early description, there was a steam-heated garage over which there were six bedrooms. Mr. Megeath made most of his money selling coal (he was the Superintendent of Coal for the Union Pacific Railroad) but had other business interests which included stationery stores.

In 1893, the company published Nebraska poets One hundred pages of prairie poems. They published guide books to Omaha and the Official Guide Book to Omaha and the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition Omaha, Nebraska from June 1 to November 1 of 1898 which sold for 25c on paper and $1 on flexible Morocco. In 1907, they were promoting as Xmas presents for monthly payments, Redpath’s History, Encyclopedia Britannica, and Webster’s Dictionary. In 1905 they were stockists for Arena, a liberal literary and political magazine published by Arena Publishing Co. in Boston, Massachusetts in the twenty years to 1909. In 1911 they had a photography department.

In 1919, Mr Dailey, a salesman and solicitor for the company went to the Woodmen building at 10:30 in the forenoon to call upon his employer’s customers. Woodmen of the World Life Insurance Society is a not-for-profit fraternal benefit society founded in 1890 in Omaha, that operates a large privately-held insurance company for its members to this day. While he was stepping into one of six passenger elevators operated by defendant, and before gaining an entrance, the conductor started the car at a high rateof speed, thereby causing Dailey to lose his balance and fall. In an effort to save himself from injury he grasped the ascending floor of the elevator and was carried rapidly upward, coming in violent contact with the upper part of the iron shaft enclosure. From that point he was swept from the car and fell into the elevator shaft, a depth of 20 or. 25 feet, striking iron beams and the cement floor at the bottom of the pit and thereby sustaining the injuries of which he complained and for which he obtained judgment, affirmed on appeal, for $40,931.

In 1922 Megeath gave his house at South 33rd Street to the Masons and a year later it was inaugurated as a children’s home named after his father. In the 1930s the company was part-owned by Donald Gates Barber.

Source: Dailey v. Sovereign Camp, Woodmen of the World, 106 Neb. 767 (1921)

Mehner & Maas, Leipzig, Germany

• Lithogr. Kunstanstalt, Mehner & Maas, Leipzig.R.
• MM over L

Mehner & Maas was founded in 1893 in Leipzig-Reudnitz by Paul Georg Mehner. As well as Germany, the company also produced for customers in Netherlands, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Balkan countries and the Ottoman Empire. Around 1913, the company was sold to Alfred Faber and downsized. Although still printing postcards, they were primarily producing posters, labels and other advertising prints until around 1939. They seem to have used a number of M&M logos.

Source: VDP; The Postcard Album; Guestrow

This card: Artis is the zoo of Amsterdam and the oldest zoo in the Netherlands. Artis is located in the Plantagebuurt with the entrance on Plantage Kerklaan.

Francisco Meira

Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

• Edç. Meira

Francisco Meira, Bookstore owner, 604, 606, 608 Andrades Neves Street, Pelotas. Souza Lima & Meira was established by 1885 but by 1900, Meira was the only owner. He also had a commercial bookshop in Rio Grande. He edited many works, often of a religious and educational nature. Meira donated a prize to a cycling event held on 12 April, 1898 by the Club Cyclista, a bronze decoration of two cyclists on a tandem.

Sources: Livrarias E Editoras No Rio Grande Do Sul: O Campo Editorial Do Livro Didático Eduardo Arriada; Pelotas de Ontem

This card: In the last quarter of the nineteenth and the early days of the twentieth century SS Danube was one of a number of such ships carrying substantial numbers of migrants from Europe to Brazil. Further reading: Relações E Registros Sobre A Imigração Portuguesa No Rio De Janeiro Uma Análise Crítica Das Fontes Ismênia de Lima Martins

Meisenbach Riffarth & Company

Leipzig, Germany

• MEISENBACH RIFFARTH & CO., LEIPZIG.

Meisenbach Riffarth & Company, printers, Berlin, Munich and Leipzig.

In business in Munich from 1876, around 1880, Georg Meisenbach revolutionized printing technology with the invention of the autotype. The halftone printing process made it possible to print photographs directly with lettering. In 1883 Meisenbach founded the “Autotype Compagnie” in Munich with the Munich architect Josef Ritter von Schmädel. In July 1891, it was merged with Meisenbach’ existing company, the Chemigraphische Kunstanstalt. In 1884, Meisenbach & Co. was founded in London, which also used autotype.

After Meisenbach retired with poor health in 1891, his Munich business was run by von Schmaedel, and his adopted son, the businessman August Meisenbach. Meisenbach Riffarth & Company was created in 1892 from the merger of Meisenbach’s Munich company with the Berlin Art Institute founded by Heinrich Riffarth in 1886. The new company was the largest manufacturer of the half-tone photos reproduced in magazines

Following the merger, a new manufacturing facility and head office were built at 7a Hauptstrasse in Berlin-Schöneberg. The Munich company continued to exist largely independently, and in 1894 a branch was established in Leipzig. Otto Rau was head of the heliographic department and a student of Karl Klic who had developed the heliographic process photogravure, in 1879 which Rau used in his work for the company. Riffarth had produced Rau’s 1891 album Aus dem Berliner Tiergarten in photogravure and copperplate printing.

The company achieved worldwide recognition through high-quality reproductions of paintings and photographs in heliogravure and was recognised at the Paris World Exhibition in 1900. They also made board games. During WWI, their patriotic postcards included one for the Nurses’ Appeal (Schwestern-Spende) and another with a portrait of Emperor Willem II saying I don’t know any parties anymore, I only know Germans! In the 1930s, the company published fashion photographs. The company filed for bankruptcy on 31 October 1994 and was deleted from the commercial register on 15 September 1997.

Source: wikipedia; Fotografie Berlin 1871 – 1914 Eine Untersuchung zum Darstellungswandel, den Medieneigenschaften, den Akteuren und Rezipienten von Stadtfotografie im Prozeß der Großstadtbildung Miriam Paeslack

This card: Construction work on the first hotel in Kitzbühel was completed in 1903. The hotel opened with the name Hotel Kitzbühel and later became known as Grand Hotel. Two years later, the first Tirolean ski championships were held and the first downhill race on the Kitzbüheler Horn took place the following year. The first gondola lift in Austria – the Hahnenkammbahn cable car – was constructed between 1926 and 1928. Source: KitzSki

Meissner & Buch, Leipzig, Germany

• Meissner & Buch, Leipzig. 12 Postkarten Serie 1042, Katz u Hund in fruhem Bund, Gesetzl. Geschutzt
• Meissner & Buch, Leipzig, Kunstler-Postkarten Serie 1157, Von der Festtafel Gesetzl. Geschutzt*
• Meissner & Buch, Leipzig, 12 Kunstler-Postkarten Serie 1023, “Hannover” Gesetzl. Geschutzt
• Meissner & Buch, Editori, Lipsia.
• Meissner & Buch, Lipsia “Napoli” 12 Cartoline postali artischi. Serie 1085. Prop. Riservata.

* Artists Postcards Series 1157 Copyrighted design

Meissner & Buch (1861 to 1988) Leipzig, the heart of the postcard industry prior to WWI, were prolific publishers of extremely fine quality postcards. They produced many artist-drawn images including (in 1898) Aus “NANSEN In Nacht und Eis”, (From “NANSEN, In Night and Ice”) twelve chromolithographed postcards with artwork by A. Goldfeld issued to celebrate Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen’s 1893 to 1896 attempt to reach the geographical North Pole. Although they employed many artists, by far the most prolific was Catharina Klein (qv). During a long relationship with the firm, Klein regularly submitted cards in sets, mostly with four works comprising the series number. Surviving examples demonstrate the depth of her creativity, style, and technical prowess in floral art. They are recorded from number 1047 in about 1902 to 2784 in the mid-1920s.

Source: Vintage Postcard Gallery

la Ménagère, Dijon, France

• Edition de “la Ménagère”

Founded in April 1838 by the iron trader André-Martin Labbé, the Bazar Bonne-Nouvelle was located on five levels at 20 boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle in Paris. It was designed by the architects Joseph-Antoine Froelicher and Jean-Louis Victor Grisart.  The store was taken over in 1842 by the financier Eugène Sala who managed it until 1851.  In 1848 he welcomed the February revolutionaries and feminist associations.

Prince Torlonia then bought it to transform it, around 1863, into a department store called “À la Ménagère” intended mainly for women as the name for the housewife suggests. The Princes Torlonia are an Italian noble family from Rome, who acquired a huge fortune in the 18th and 19th centuries through administering the finances of the Vatican.

Torlonia opened a branch of À la Ménagère in the city of Dijon , at 59-65 rue de la Liberté. The Dijon store was created by Georges Maugey and inaugurated on 19 June 1897.  In 1907 the Société française des Magasins Modernes, took possession of the store and decided to move it to a new building in 1924. During the occupation, the café-concert was very much frequented by German soldiers which caused a scandal and gave it a bad reputation at the end of the second world war.

À la Ménagère produced branded kitchenware and may also have produced postcards as department stores of the time commonly did. As the Paris store became a central store of the New Galleries in 1899, it seems more likely that postcards such as mine which was postally used in 1902 were issued by the Dijon branch .

Source: wikipedia

Gionanni Mengoli, Bologna, Italy

• Ed. G. Mengoli, Bologna – Fot. G. Modiano e Co., Milano
• Ediz*. G. Mengoli logo in the photograph: MTB

* Edizione – publishing

Giovanni Mengoli, Bologna (30 August 1860 to 15 January 1926) photographer and postcard publisher, 98 Zamboni, Bologna between 1900 and 1915. Mengoli commissioned local topographicals from Milanese publishers Guido Modiano (below) and Menotti Bassani (qv). Mengoli edited and published Bologna Scomparsa, a series of twenty postcards reproducing views and costumes characteristic of the late nineteenth century and five similar series entitled Ancient Bologna which featured earlier times. His son Corrado moved to Rhodes in 1924 to direct the construction of the road network of the islands of the then Italian Dodecanese.

Source: archivi citta della archivi

John Menzies & Company

Edinburgh

• John Menzies & Co.

John Menzies (1808 to 1879) of Edinburgh, newsagent. Victorian entrepreneur Menzies founded his small newsagency when he was 25 years old and built the business into a national chain. Menzies opened his first bookshop at 61 Princes Street in 1832 using his experience as a bookseller in London and Fleet Street publishing contacts. Menzies quickly developed an innovative business model selling many otherwise unavailable book titles, as well as a large selection of stationery and office supplies, all under one roof. A trail-blazer from day one, Menzies led the way by becoming the first Edinburgh bookstore to sell issues of the Scotsman newspaper over the counter and was the first Scottish agent to feature copies of the popular satirical journal Punch. In the 1850s, Menzies spotted another niche in the market by obtaining exclusive rights to open newspaper and magazine stalls in railway stations up and down the country. This idea was expanded further by forging a new distribution line that saw the company employ basket boys to sell newspapers on trains. In 1859 Menzies closed the premises on Princes Street and moved into wholesale distribution and the company was without a dedicated presence on the Scottish high street until 1928. He had Scottish photocards made by Valentines of Dundee (qv), presumably for sale in railway stations. Menzies died at his townhouse, 3 Grosvenor Crescent in Edinburgh’s West End, and was buried in Warriston Cemetery, on the north side of the city. The Menzies family were involved in the business until 2007.

Source: wikipedia: John Menzies; the Scotsman David McLean 9 December 2013

A. L. Merrill

Toronto, Ontario, Canada

• A. L. Merrill, Toronto, Canada
• A. L. Merrill, Toronto.

A L Merrill, 43 Yonge Street, Toronto, was a stationer and retail bookseller. Early on he embraced the postcard as retailer and publisher. Merrill published photographs of Ontario and beyond as postcards into the divided-back era, some of them framed in elaborate decoration. Many were made in Germany. Early divided-backs bear the puzzling instruction Write here for Inland & Foreign Post only.

Business in Toronto is very steady. Picture post cards are going as lively as ever. Most dealers say that local view cards are the best sellers. It looks like a good season for valentines of the better class. Some dealers report that they are carrying no comic valentines at all. Playing cards and all sorts of parlor games are very active. The best selling card names, exclusive of the regular playing cards are Pit, Bunco, Bourse and games of a similar nature. A. L. Merrill, the picture post card and stereoscopic view dealer is very busy in his line of business. He has three branch stores in the city going at full swing.

Bookseller and Stationer of Canada journal; report on trade in January 1907

In an article in the March 1907 edition of the same journal, he gave us a graphic insight into the state of his business and the trade more generally:

You ask me what particular kind of card I find to be most popular. Well, it’s all according to the subject. Now, in view cards, the auto-chrome is the most popular.
For comics the glossy card like those made by Miller & Lang and Davidson Bros. For pictures of actresses the black and white glossy is the best, made by the same publishers, and by Beagles.
As for special schemes for selling post cards, I use a very large window display, and also have a very large display in the store. In my various stores I have 40 whirling card racks holding about 2,000 cards each so that my racks alone carry about 80,000 cards. Another scheme I use and find profitable is an outside show case. Here, come outside and I’ll show you one. This, as you see, is a specially constructed flat case about two and a half feet broad by about five feet long, having a green baize back-ground on which are pinned all the cards I can get in without undue crowding, and covered with a plate glass door. I have four of these cases, which I hang upon
vacant walls or fences just outside my store, thus getting value out of blank space. In addition to these advertising and selling schemes I always have a large counter display, arranged in sets enclosed in envelopes with the name of the set printed on. Then I get my clerks to push sales energetically. They suggest to a purchased cards in addition to those asked for. In this manner my sales are practically doubled. I also have an advertising contract with a large Toronto daily newspaper.
Yes, I certainly have series of cards of my own. I have 50 Toronto subjects, totalling 1,000,000 cards, and 50 Canadian views from ocean to ocean, totalling 1,000,000 and 50 views of Canadian cities and towns also totalling 1,000,000 cards. This year I expect to handle 10,000,000 cards. There will be a consignment of 100,000 cards in to-day from Chicago.
With reference to the probable continuance of the post card craze, I should hardly call it any longer a craze. Picture post cards are now a staple commodity. Before forming this opinion, which I feel sure is a correct one, I traveled ten thousand miles visiting cities in the United States, in 1905 and in 1906, I covered about as many miles in Europe. In Paris, Berlin and London particularly, I observed that the picture post card was firmly established; and on the main streets of those cities, about every tenth store carried post cards, while some firms have been for a long time, and are now selling nothing but post cards. I feel sure that so long as pictures are sold at all, they will sell best in the form of picture post cards.

Merrill gave the address 304½ Yonge street when, along with ten other dealers, he appeared in court in October 1908 on charges of selling obscene postcards.

Messenger Company

Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, England 

• Messenger Co, Bromsgrove THE “MESSENGER” CO, PRINTERS, BROMSGROVE logo of female artist

The first edition of the Bromsgrove and Droitwich Weekly Messenger launched on Saturday, 7 January 1860. In an opening address to introduce the paper the first editor, Frederick Marcus, set out high ideals. Mr Marcus said the aim was to create a newspaper which commands attention, and contains points that interest, amuse, profit and instruct. The paper’s principles were also stressed, Mr Marcus writing that the Messenger would not give offence to readers in publishing slander and abuse. He added that articles of this kind would never pollute its pages.

With the improvements in technology and the process of printing newspapers, the paper embraced these changes and the possibilities they brought. One improvement was the size of the paper, and the local content it offered readers. The first issue consisted of just four pages, of which only one was printed locally, with the rest coming from London ready printed. Only six columns were dedicated to news from the region, amongst these were reports of court cases in Worcester.

Over time, national news coverage decreased, before being dropped altogether to leave the Advertiser/Messenger as a paper solely dedicated to news from the area. The centenary of the paper was celebrated in 1960 with a front page which included a congratulatory message from the Queen but was marred by including a picture of the paper’s founder, Alfred Palmer which was not actually him. The paper has an impressive record when it comes to the continuity of production, despite some close calls brought by wars, material shortages and mechanical faults. In the summer of 1959, four apprentices, unaffected by a printers strike, kept the presses rolling and managed to produced seven emergency editions.

The company produced artist-drawn and photograph topographical postcards. Their undivided-backs featured in the “Messenger” series.

Source: Bromsgrove Advertiser

This card: Blackwell Convalescent Home (also known as Blackwell Recovery Hospital and a long time ago Blackwell Sanatorium) was in Blackwell, Bromsgrove. During WWI it served as a recovery hospital for wounded servicemen. Later, Birmingham children were sent there to recover from the ailments of the day caused by pollution and poverty.

There is a converlesent home, down blackwell lane
Where we have bread & Jam 3 times a day
Egg & ham we never see
Nor no sugar in our tea,
Thats why we fade fade away.

Source: Birmingham Forum

Messmer Finest Brand Tea

• THEE-MESSMER Feinste Marke signature in painting: Jac Hoffmann

Eduard Messmer (1824 to 1910) founded a deli-and grocery store in Baden-Baden on 21 September 1852. Messmer quickly became purveyor to Wilhelm of Prussia and his wife Augusta who had for many years been staying at the Hotel Messmer of his father Johann Friedrich Baptist Messmer .

In 1886 Messmer opened a branch in Frankfurt am Main, which was headed by his son Otto Messmer (1858 to 1940). In 1895 Otto Messmer registered Messmer tea brand. Messmer issued a number of artist-drawn topographicals including this one by Franz Jacob Hoffmann (1851 to 1903) landscape painter in Frankfurt.

Today Messmer is a brand of the East Frisian tea company Laurens Spethmann.

The Metropolitan News Company

Boston, MA, USA

• Published by the Metropolitan News Co., Boston
• Published by The Metropolitan News Co., Boston, Mass.
• The Metropolitan News Co., Boston, Mass. Manufacturers of Souvenir Postal Cards
• The Metropolitan News Co., Boston, Mass and Leipzig. Manufacturers of Souvenir Postal Cards.
• Metropolitan News Co. Boston, Mass. and Germany
• COPYRIGHT 1904 BY THE METROPOLITAN NEWS CO., BOSTON.
• MNCo in painter’s palette
• – METROPOLITAN NEWS CO – BOSTON in circle surrounding drawing of Boston

The Metropolitan News Company, 48 Congress Street, Lock Box 2263 Boston. In 1900 four Jewish immigrants including Charles Hertzig (1884 to 1968), then only 16, pooled their resources to establish the company in a rented basement at 172 Henry Street. Here they bundled the four Yiddish daily papers they carried by horse and wagon to all parts of the city. They became a major publisher and printer of view-cards in colour, black & white, sepia, and with hand colouring in both halftones and in collotype. Hertzig, then still president of the company, died at the age of 84 in April 1968 when the company was still the largest newspaper wholesaler in the United States. Metropolitan captured views throughout the American Northeast but postcards of New England scenery were produced in greatest number. They had a close relationship with Robbins Brothers (qv) for whom they made many postcards.

Source: Nils Thor Granlund: Show Business Entrepreneur and America’s First Radio Star Larry J. Hoefling 20 Apr 2010 McFarland page 157; metropostcard [offline as at October 2022]; Southwest Harbor Public Library

Metz Brothers, Tubingen, Germany

• Gebruder Metz, Kunstanstalt Tubingen
• Gebr Metz Tubingen
• Gebr. Metz, Tubingen. Nachbildung verboten 1904
• Gebruder Metz,Kunstverlags-Anstalt, Basel
• Gebr. Metz, Kunstverlagsanstalt, Basel.
• Gebr. Metz, Kunstverlags-Anstalt, Basel.
• Original-Eigentum Gebr. Metz, Tubingen
• H. Metz, Kunst Verlags Anstalt, Tubingen

The Postkartenverlag (postcard publishers) Brothers Metz company was established in Tübingen in 1828. The company published pictures, brochures, guides and many postcards. The demand for postcards grew enormously from 1890, and Heinrich Metz published in his own name as early as 1895. He and his and the Gustav produced cards in the business name after they took over from their father in 1896. At times, the house was one of the largest publishers of these in Germany. In 1897 the Tübingen business opened a branch at 25 Clarastrasse in Basel, which was headed by Gustav Metz. The first litho card of Basel by Metz dates from 1897. The company moved to 18 Reichensteinerstrasse in 1898, where Gustav Metz set up a postcard publishing house in the back rooms. The company did not produce the cards itself, but brought them mostly from Tübingen and ran a thriving art publishing house. In 1902, Gustav Metz was able to buy a building at Reichensteinerstrasse by the builder D. Kessler, who had created a magnificent facade in 1895. Gustav Metz split the branch in Basel from the Tübingen plant and continued to operate it under his own label Gustav Metz, formerly Metz, Basel. By 1907 the publishing house was no longer registered under the name of Gebr. Metz, but in the sole ownership of Gustav Metz. Some of their cards credit Nenke & Ostermaier (qv) for photograph and photochromy.

Source: wikipedia Gebrüder Metz

Meyer’s Bookstore

Gizycko, Poland

• A Meyer’s Buchhandlung, Lötzen

Most East Prussian postcards came from Lötzen, the present Gizycko in Poland. At that time the most popular publishers were A. Meyer, H. Maleyka, P. Kuhnel, A. Schwartzkopff and they seem to have produced 3500 to 4000 different designs of postcards depicting Loetzen and district. In 1921 Meyer published an eight-page guide to Lötzen and its surroundings Führer durch Lötzen und Umgebung.

Mezzotint Co, Brighton, England

• Mezzotint Co., York Road North, Brighton
• Mezzotint Co. York Hill, London Rd, Brighton
• Mezzotint Co, York Hill, London Road, Brighton
• Mezzotint Co, York Hill, London Road, Brighton THE “MEZZOTINT” SERIES

Major Brighton publisher of collotype postcards with a printing works at the junction of London Road and York Hill. The early cards generally have captions in a gothic font. Mezzotint began issuing cards in 1901 and soon enjoyed conspicuous success. It concentrated almost exclusively on collotypes, and some of its early output was of very high quality. Hand-coloured versions of some cards were produced, which could be very attractive, but were often rather poorly done. Prisoners in Lewes Gaol may have been employed on this work. Mezzotint also published occasional real photographics. Until 1907 the Mezzotint proprietors were Charles Lane and James Hamilton. They published undivided backs between 1901 and early 1903. Picture Postcard Annual 2020 records a card postmarked 7 October 1901. The cards are very similar in design to some cards of Brighton issued by Stengel & Co. of Dresden and Berlin. The backs are printed using either black or brownish red ink, and the plainest of serif capitals. By late summer in 1902 the backs of some cards were being labelled The Mezzotint Series to the left of the title Post Card, but this innovation was dropped later in the year. The pictures on the fronts of cards with undivided backs have a wide, white border at the base and narrower borders at the sides and on the top.

Source: sussexpostcards.info another excellent directory of publishers.

This card: The Martyrs’ Memorial was constructed in 1901 and was unveiled by the Earl of Portsmouth. The inscription panel on the memorial reads: In loving memory of the undernamed seventeen protestant martyrs who, for their faithful testimony to God’s truth were, during the reign of Queen Mary, burned to death in front of the then Star Inn now the Town Hall. This Obelisk, Provided By Public Subscriptions, was Erected A.D. 1901. Dates Of Martyrdom are given between July 1555 and June 1557.

These executions were part of the Marian persecutions of Protestants during the reign of Mary I (1553 to 1558). Protestants in England and Wales were executed under legislation that punished by burning anyone judged guilty of heresy against Catholicism. At least 300 people were recognised by contemporary sources as burned over the five years of Mary I’s reign .

Since its unveiling there has been an annual commemoration on or around 5 November at the foot of the memorial for the Martyrs.

Francesco Paolo Michetti

• Etude F.P. Michetti

Francesco Paolo Michetti (2 October 1851 to 5 March 1929) was an Italian painter and photographer. The Michetti dell’Aerofototeca Nazionale archive consists of negatives of aerial shots of Rome and elsewhere and airplanes, hangars and aircraft, especially airships and the Royal Armed Forces, representing a precious testimony of the dawn of Italian aviation. Michetti’s departure from his usual diet of portraits, landscapes and traditions and local customs for aeronautical material may have been motivated by the aviation career of his son Giorgio (1888 to 1966). The FP Michetti National Painting Award was founded in 1947 in honour of Michetti.

Source: wikipedia Francesco Paolo Michetti;

The Mid-Ocean

Block Island, Rhode Island, USA

• PUBLISHED BY THE MID OCEAN.

The Mid-Ocean, a summertime semi-weekly newspaper whose life spanned 20 years to the end of Summer 1906. Their premises were located between the Island Manor Resort and Saint Andrew’s Church on Chapel Street. The Block Island Budget was established in 1885 by W. G. Crawford, of Boston, and was sold by him to John P. Sanborn, of Newport, who changed the name to The Mid-Ocean and printed it in the office of the Mercury. Charles E. Perry edited the paper for most of its publication.

Sources: The Printer and the Press by H. P. Smith (Boston & Syracuse: The Mason Publishing Company) 1902; Block Island Times;

Carlo Mieli, Alexandria, Egypt

• CARLO MIELI, ALEXANDRIE (EGYPTE)
• Carlo Mieli, Alexandrie (Egypte

Carlo Mieli, early postcard publisher, Alexandria, Egypt. One of his cards featured Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations in Port Said in 1897. One of Mieli’s cards of Alexandria, Alexandrie, Boulevard de Ramleh, 1903 is the subject of a poem by Joachim Sartorius. In 1903 Mieli was one of the freemasons of Cincinnato lodge, one of the Italian lodges who strove to rebuild Nuova Pompeia Lodge which had been dissolved for a second time for inactivity. In 1927 Cincinnato was one of two Egyptian lodges to organise General Assembly of Alexandria Freemasonry where people agreed to oppose Fascism by any means. In 1919 the journal of San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Activities reported The Foreign Trade Department is in receipt of a communication from Mr. Carlo Mieli of Alexandria, stating that he is about to organize on an extensive scale, and under the protection of the United States Consul, a permanent exhibit of samples of American products and an information bureau”.

Source: “Livella” Conquers the Mediterranean Region: History of Italian Freemasonry in Egypt Emanuela Locci writing in the journal Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society – Volume 1 Number 2 – Winter 2013-2014; San Francisco Chamber of Commerce Activities, Vol. 6, 1919; Lyrik Line

Johannes Miesler, Berlin

• KUNSTANSTALT J. MIESLER, BERLIN S

Johannes Miesler (7 April 1851 to 5 June 1905) entrepreneur and printer regarded as a pioneer of coloured chromolithographed postcards and the Gruss Aus postcard. It is said that Miesler was the first to send hand-drawn pictures as an image postcard in the 1870s, creating one of the oldest known postcards with individual hand drawings. The company was a mixture of chromolitho printer and deluxe paper manufacturer. It specialised in picture postcards, greeting cards, calendars, poster printing and reliefs. Miesler’s head lithographer/technical director Paul Grasnick left the company on 1 October 1896 to form Finkenrath & Grasnick 9 months later. The J. Miesler business traded from 1876 to about 1904, when it declared insolvency shortly before the death of the company founder.

Source: The Postcard Album; wikipedia Johannes Miesler

Professor Adolf Miethe

• Reproduktion nach Naturfarbenphotographie. – System Prof. Miethe*

*Reproduction by Prof. Miethe’s system of natural colour photography.

Adolf Miethe (25 April 1862 to 5 May 1927). The journal Nature paid tribute to Professor Miethe on 21 May 1927: PHOTOGRAPHIC science has suffered a great loss in the death of Regierungsrat Dr. Adolf Miethe, professor at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg … in 1899 [he became] professor at Charlottenburg as successor to H. W. Vogel, the discoverer of the sensitising action of dyes on the photographic emulsion … Miethe was responsible for the teaching of scientific and practical photography in all its branches, photo-mechanical methods, spectral analysis, optics, and astronomy.

Regierungsrat (Government Council) is an official designation in Germany for the office of a civil servant in the higher service career group of the federal and state administrations. Almost all officials of the higher German civil service had this official title.

Hotel Milan, Rome

• HOTEL MILAN ROME

Hotel Milan, 11 piazza Montecitorio by the via Colonna advertised as The most central hotel in the city. Dating from the 16th century, this hotel occupies a historic building in the centre of Rome, opposite the Parliament building. In 1912 the Hotel was said to be frequented by Deputies.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the Milan Hotel in which British Royal Air Force troops were billeted was evacuated on 12 January 1947 after a hoax telephone bomb threat which officials attributed to Irgun Zvai Leumi a Zionist paramilitary organization that operated in Mandate Palestine between 1931 and 1948.

The hotel became the Colonna Palace Hotel after a major transformation in 1975-6.

Oswald Milke

Kingston, Jamaica, West Indies.

• Verlag Osw. Milke, Kingston-Jamaica W.I.

Oswald Milke, 12 King Street, Kingston. In 1887 Milke, a German emigre, was working for his brother’s jewellery and optical store in central Kingston. By 1907, when it was destroyed in an earthquake along with the family home three miles out, he was described as the owner. Being wealthy people with connections, Milke and his family were able to flee to Pennsylvania. Milke denounced the English Governor Swettenham as the Great Incompetent Cad for refusing American aid. Word also reached Allentown of a mishap in 1895 whereby Milke was thrown from a horse-drawn buggy when the horse bolted, leaving Mrs Milke and their baby in the runaway.

Source: Kingston Gleaner, 19 July 1887; The Allentown Leader, Allentown, Pennsylvania, 31 Jan 1907 and 22 May 1895

This card: The Bog Walk to Port Antonio branch line opened in 1896, closed in 1975, reopened in 1977 and closed for good in 1978. The line was 54 miles (87 km) long. It served the surrounding agricultural community, providing a means for bananas to reach and be exported from Port Antonio. Troja Station was 31 miles (50 km) from the Kingston terminus. Source: wikipedia

Millar & Lang, Glasgow, Scotland

• National Series M. & L., G.
• “NATIONAL” SERIES. in shield surmounted by a lion
• THE “PREMIER” PICTURE POST CARD. Shield with M & L in the first and third quarters THE “PREMIER” SERIES

Founded in Glasgow in 1903, Millar & Lang was a publisher of postcards depicting a wide variety of subjects, including landscapes, street scenes, comic cards and animals. They also used a wide variety of techniques. Most of their cards were published under the National Series name. Some scenes that were printed as black & white real photo postcards were used to create hand coloured collotypes. They also produced embossed greeting cards. By the 1930s many of the company’s photo cards began to be hand coloured. In addition they published a series of line drawings by the artist Andrew Allan (1863 to 1940) in the New Colour-Crayon Process. They published cartoons of popular songs in their Premier Series.

Miller Cottage

Atlantic City, New Jersey, USA

• MILLER COTTAGE AND ANNEX

Miller Cottage and Annex, hotel, 9 to 15 North Georgia Avenue, Atlantic City, New Jersey. The chintzy lobby of Miller Cottage also featured in early postcards. This image featured in cards into the divided-back era. A later linen card published by EC Kropp revealed the building to be blue. In July 1947 the hotel advertised in The Catholic Standard and Times as having a capacity of 250. It was said to be 1½ miles from church. It offered European plan only that is, no meals. The manager was Hettye Cruthamel. The building was later a flower shop.

W. L. Milner & Company

Toledo, Ohio, USA

• Published by W. L. Milner & Co., Toledo, Ohio. Germany

W. L. Milner & Co., Toledo, published cards produced by the American News Company (qv) in their Excelsior series.

The Minnesota News Company

St Paul, Minnesota, USA

• The Minnesota News Company, St Paul Minn., Leipzig, Dresden.

The Minnesota News Company, 19-21 W. 3rd St., St. Paul, Minnesota appear to have published newspapers but their part in the history of journalism there is not clear. In a list of the concerns and people who were assessed on personal property valued at $5,000 or more for 1893, Minnesota News company was listed as having $12,000 excluding bank stock, stock in corporations and real estate. Metropostcard says they published and distributed local view-cards for the American News Company.

Source: The Saint Paul Daily Globe Sunday Morning, July 23, 1893

Fanny Mary Minns

• F.M.Minns

Fanny Mary Minns (1857 to 1929) Victorian artist whose paintings of Edinburgh were published in George Stewart’s Castle series (qv). She is sometimes noted as Frances but her birth and death records are Fanny. Fanny Minns was a flower painter of independent means who studied art in Dresden, and illustrated books and painted pottery. She lived in Carisbrook on the Isle of Wight and taught art in Newport there. Her views of island scenes were used for book illustrations including The Silence of Dean Maitland and as colour picture postcards, e.g. Waiting for a bite (children fishing on a stream bank at Calbourne). She was unmarried. She travelled in search of new subjects until the end of her life. Also on my card of “Mylne’s Court Old Edinburgh”: “Castle” Series Old Edinburgh Post Cards.

Source: Suffolk Artists;

Misch & Stock, London

• Misch & Stock, 1 & 3 Cripplegate, London E.C.

Misch & Stock, 1 & 3 Cripplegate, London E.C. A fine art publishing firm, they imported a series of cards featuring romanticised sketches of young people and animals from Albrecht & Meister (qv) which they overprinted with their own name. Early promotions were assisted by a competition in which participants were rewarded for jokes they sent in on postcards issued by them. Mr Stock retired in 1905 and the letters M & S in the three-bells logo was replaced with M & Co.

Source: Picture Postcards and their Publishers Anthony Byatt (1978 Golden Age Postcard Books) page 187

Mitchell’s Book Store, Buenos Aires

• Mitchell’s Book Store, 621 Cuyo.
• Mitchell’s Book Store, 578 Cangallo 580
• MITCHELL’S, 580 CANGALLO 578, BUENOS AIRES.

Mitchell’s Book Store, stationers, 621 Cuyo and 578 Cangallo 580 Buenos Aires. Mitchell’s English Book Store published photo-cards of Argentine people at large and tinted topographicals. Mitchell’s published a print of the British Clock Tower, Buenos Aires, a gift from the city’s British community built in 1916 in commemoration of Argentine independence.

Edward H Mitchell, San Francisco

• EDWARD H. MITCHELL, PUBLISHER, SAN FRANCISCO.

San Franciscan Edward H. Mitchell was one of the earliest and most prolific postcard publishers in the United States. Cards bearing his name as publisher have been used, collected and studied since 1898⁷⁵. Several extensive checklists running to over three thousand entries have been compiled and updated. Mitchell published very early cards – coloured vignettes – that were printed in Germany. He was publishing undivided back cards from 225 Post Street before the earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed his printing operation and much of San Francisco. He continued work from home until he built a plant and warehouse on Army Street. Mitchell identifies himself on each of them as Edward H. Mitchell without more⁷⁶. Mitchell closed the postcard company in 1923 to concentrate on his oil interests. The three and a half million cards left in his inventory were sold off in one lot for $500.

Source: “Edward H Mitchell, Himself ” By Lewis Baer;

This card: The California Pigeon Farm was established in 1898 by J. Y. Johnson and said by another postcard publisher to be the largest in the world. It was located alongside the Los Angeles River across from Elysian Park, near the intersection of West Dayton and Avenue 20, later renamed Figueroa and San Fernando Road, respectively. The farm benefited from its proximity to the railroad tracks, where the free-flying pigeons could scavenge for grain that dropped from the railroad cars. The farm’s principal product was squab, but it also generated large quantities of fertilizer, which it sold to local orchards and farms.

Johnson discouraged sightseers, but the spectacle of thousands of white pigeons bobbing on the ground or huddling on the rooftops was irresistible. Visitors came to the banks or peered down from Elysian Park to see the birds. Picture postcards were made for the benefit of friends and relatives back home.

The ranch attracted journalists from around the world, too. “A visit to this queer ranch is one of the pleasures enjoyed by most tourists,” wrote a correspondent for the Washington Post, who described Johnson’s ranch as a “flourishing little town of pigeons.”

Writing for Pearson’s Magazine of London, Ernest Rydall noted the sounds that emanated from the ranch’s multiple coop-houses. “One of the strangest noises ever heard is the constant cooing from the throats of these thousands of pigeons. It reminds me of the winds blowing through old windows in winter, or the ceaseless dashing of waves upon the beach a long distance away.”

Local commentators took the booster angle, attributing the ranch’s success to the region’s climate. “Southern California is particularly favorable to pigeons,” Pasadena naturalist Charles Frederick Holder reported in Scientific American. “The perpetual summer is an important factor.”

Bertha H. Smith echoed Holder in Sunset Magazine: “The raising of squabs for market is a ticklish business. More than one man has tried it and failed. The growth of this ranch, which started three years ago with a stock of two thousands birds, shows what pigeons think of California climate, and that is one of the secrets of its success.”

In February 1914, heavy rains caused the Los Angeles river to flood, and much of the farm was washed away. The Los Angeles Times reported that the loss was valued at $50,000.

Source: L.A. Was Once Home to the World’s Largest Flock of Pigeons Nathan Masters 25 April, 2013

John Mitchell

Keith, Moray, Scotland

• J. MITCHELL, STATIONER, KEITH

John Mitchell started business in Keith in 1865 as a bookseller and stationer, branched into printing and established The Banffshire Herald in 1892. Mitchell died 13 December 1916 aged 77 at his home, Watson Cottage in Land Street.

Joseph A. Mitri, Jaffa, Israel

• Joseph A. Mitri, Jaffa

Joseph A. Mitri, photographer in Jaffa from 1902. Mitri had cards made of his topographical photographs by Mader & Springer, art publishers and printers of Isny im Allgäu, Baden-Württemberg, Germany (above).

At one stage Armenian Garabed Krikorian and a Mr Mitry were in partnership as photographers in Jerusalem. Whether the latter later went to Jaffa is speculation.

Carl Mittag, Berlin

• Verlag von Carl Mittag vorm*. Bruckner & Renner Hofbuchhdl* Friedrichroda

* Vormals: formerly Hofbuchhandlung: Office

Between 1889 and 1892 Carl Mittag occupied a tenement house and factory building at 41 Karl-Marx-Strasse, Berlin. He seems to have taken over the Friedrichroda office of the publishers Bruckner and Renner of Meiningen. My card was postally used in Germany 23 June 1900. In 1925 Mittag copyrighted an improvement in shredding machines. Whether he is the Carl Mittag who opened a bookshop at 133 Hauptstraße, Bad Lauterberg in 1891 is not clear.

Source: Catalog of Copyright Entries. New Series: 1925 Copyright Office, Library of Congress, 1926

Mittet & Company, Oslo, Norway

• Eneret Mittet & Co Kristiana Norge
• M & Co.

Mittet & Co. A/S was established in Oslo (then Kristiania), Norway as a photo agency by Ingebrigt Mittet (1875 to 1950) in 1899 and continued and expanded by his sons. In 1898 Mittet began to buy and collect new and old photographs, later hiring his own photographers, and published an enormous number of postcards. As well as postcards, they also released children’s books and art literature⁸⁰. In addition to producing black & white and hand-coloured real photo cards of views and types of Norway, Mittet published tinted collotypes and unusual tinted half-tones. These cards were printed in Norway⁸¹. Approximately 1,520,000 negatives were transferred to the Norwegian National Library in 2007⁸².

Source: Wikipedia: Mittet & Co;

Guido Modiano & Company

Milan, Italy

• G. Modiano e C. – Milano.
• G. Modiano e Co. – Milano.
• G. Modiano & Co. – Milano. Proprietà E. Guidorizzi
• Ed. G. Mengoli, Bologna – Fot. G. Modiano e Co., Milano

Guido Modiano, publisher, Milan. Born in 1899 in Milan, Modiano came from a Jewish Sephardic family from Thessaloniki, who settled in Milan in the 19th century. When his father died, he took over the family’s printshop, G. Modiano & Company, specialising in prestigious books and cultural magazines, including some of the best known architectural journals of the 30s (Edilizia Moderna, Quadrante, etc.) and also working for Olivetti. He was still publishing books into the 1920s. A typographer himself, from 1933 he contributed to the design of the font Casabella and released a geometric typeface called Triennale. He also published a number of essays promoting Rationalism and functional typography. In 1940 he curated the Exhibition of Graphic Arts at the 7th Milan Triennale. During World War II, he joined the army fighting in Russia and died in 1943 in Germany in a bombing. The same year his printing house was also destroyed by bombs. Topographicals were numbered.

Sources: Archivio Graphica Italiana

E. Moebius, Camden, NJ, USA

• E. MOEBIUS, PHOTOTYPE, CAMDEN, N.J.

Emil Moebius, (born 1854) printer, Camden. In 1906 German-born Moebius advertised phototypes (gelatin prints) and photogravures – illustrations for art subjects and art catalogues – from 125 Federal St. Earlier, Moebius traded with Paul Halfter as Moebius & Halfter, Photo-Gelatin Printers at 431 Webster in 1895 and 321 Federal between 1896 and 1898. In 1898 Frederick Moebius who lived at 1118 Pierce Camden was photo printer for Emil Moebius. In 1900 Charles K. Greiner of Collingswood was a photographer for Moebius. In 1914 E. Moebius Co traded from 123-125 Federal St. In his time Moebius was secretary of the Harmonie Singing Society of Philadelphia which had originated within the Independent German Congregation there. Moebius printed a series of numbered photocards for the Houston Club of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Source: gary.saretzky.com

Molini Zopfi

Redona, Bergamo, Lombardy, Italy

• MOLINI ZOPFI REDONA PRESSE BERGAMO Stab. Bolis.

This is a card for business correspondence sent in 1904 by Molini Zopfi of Redona near Bergamo to Lietha AG of Grusch in Switzerland.

Samuele Zopfi (27 June 1828 to 6 December 1888) was a Swiss entrepreneur. After unification he was attracted by the development potential offered by the Seriana valley where Swiss workers were already present. In 1867 he set up a mechanized mill for grinding cereals in Redona near Bergamo. It was one of the first of its kind in Italy. Zopfi & C. were Grinding grains with an American system mill. When Zopfi died, his son-in-law Giacomo Trumpy (who signed this card) took over Zopfi & C. and changed its name to SA Molini Zopfi.

Lietha AG of Grüsch, a political municipality in the Prättigau/Davos region in the Swiss canton of Graubünden operated a commercial mill and an electricity station and traded in grain, flour, feed and foodstuffs. They were in liquidation in 2010 and wound up in 2011.

Montegriffo & Cumbo, Gibraltar

• Montegriffo & Cumbo – Gibraltar

Montegriffo & Cumbo published photocards of Gibraltar in partnership with one of the Cumbos (qv) who also published in their own names.

This Card: Governor’s Palace, Gibraltar. The Convent has been the official residence of the governor of Gibraltar since 1728. It was originally a convent of Franciscan friars, hence its name, and was built in 1531 and heavily rebuilt during the 18th and 19th centuries. Source: wikipedia

Montreal Import Company

Montreal, Canada

• M.I.Co
• Montreal Import Co, Montreal

Listed at 17 St John, Montreal in the categories WHOLESALE FANCY GOODS MANUFACTURERS, PICTORIAL POST CARDS and WHOLESALE STATIONERS. In 1906-07 Canadian illustrator Alfred W. Bell supplied artwork, almost always of fashionable men and women engaged in winter sports, for numerous postcards published by Valentine & Sons Ltd, Dundee and Montreal Import Co of Montreal. There’s an early divided-back card of Quebec here.

Sources: Union publishing company of Ingersoll : business and professional directory of all cities in Ontario, with Montreal, Quebec, Winnipeg, Halifax, St. John, Sherbrooke and Hull…containing complete classified lists of all persons doing business in the cities 1902-03; Index of Canadian Illustrators

Not to be confused with Metropolitan Importing Co New York, New York who published with the same initials.

This card: The Maisonneuve Monument is a monument by sculptor Louis-Philippe Hébert built in 1895 in Place d’Armes in Montreal. This monument in memory of Paul Chomedey de Maisonneuve, founder of Montreal, was unveiled on July 1, 1895, as part of the celebrations for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the city in 1892. Source: wikipedia

The Montreal Lithographing Company Limited

• MONTREAL LITHO CO. LIMITED.

The Montreal Lithographing Company Limited, (incorporated 14 August 1896) printers, published a series of topographical cards of locations on the Canadian Pacific Railway. They also printed fund-raising and recruiting posters during World War I. In 1916 they were advertising as HIGH CLASS LITHOGRAPHERS AND DESIGNERS OF Calendars, Show Cards, Labels, Office Stationery, Advertising and Playing Cards from their Office and Works at Ontario Street and Papineau Avenue MONTREAL, Canada. In a government list of businesses employing 50 or more in 1934-5 the company were listed at 1685 Ontario St. E.

Source: Two years of war : as viewed from Ottawa

Moore & Wingham

Chichester, Sussex, England

• Moore & Wingham, Publishers of High-Class Post Cards, Printers & Stationers, 39 East Street, Chichester, Sussex
• Moore & Wingham, Publishers of High-Class Post Cards, 39 East Street, Chichester, Sussex.

John William Moore, born 1843. In 1875 he took over a small printing company in Eastgate, Chichester. With a shop at 39 East Street, he originally had his printing works in the back. As the business grew, he expanded to a separate printing works in St John’s Street. He retired in the early 1900’s and his son, H W Moore, and son-in law, P T Wingham, took over. Subsequently, the business was re-named Moore & Wingham although this appears to have been long after the undivided back period. It remained unchanged until 1945. The successor business still trades. My cards are of drawings of buildings by local artist George Fossick.

Source: Sussex Postcards; Moore & Tillyer

Marie Constance Moreau

Versailles, France

• Mme Moreau, edit., Versailles
• Cliche B – E.M. Edit., a V.

Marie Constance Moreau (1862 to 1951) 10 Rue Hoche, Versailles, published cards of Versailles into the divided-back era. Some at least of her undivided-backs were printed by Bergeret of Nancy (qv). She also published guides to Versailles. She married Camille Biehler (1859 to 1925). Attributing EM Edit a V to Editions Moreau is rather speculative.

S Louisa Morgan

SLS

Mrs S Louisa Morgan was one of a small number of women artists of the Manchester school to exhibit in the Royal Academy in the 1880s.

She produced the art work for a number of sets of 6 cards of the Clyde estuary (Firth of Clyde) and elsewhere in Scotland which Tucks sold as OILETTE in the divided-back era. Set 1210 were listed in their 1904 Postcard Catalogue. Set 7335 were listed in their 1911/1912 Catalogue. Set 7620 were listed in their 1911/1912 and 1930 Catalogues.

This card is strikingly similar in style and subject matter to an number of these cards and could be by the same artist. Set 1210 was only credited to Morgan on the packets. It was sold as both divided- and undivided-back and featured in the 1904 catalogue. On the other hand, the works are not signed and the monogram is difficult to reconcile with the artist’s married name.

Source:TuckDB Postcards

Giuseppe and Lucia Morgano

Capri, Italy

• Giuseppe Morgano “Zum Kater Hiddigeigei”, Capri. in much smaller print: [149] Ediz. Artistica RICHTER & Co. NAPOLI

Giuseppe (died 1923) and Lucia Morgano (died 1943) took over the Zum Kater Hiddigeigei café in 1880 and tranformed it into an evening meeting place for German travellers and other ex pats. They had a tearoom, miniature beer-hall, billiards and an Anglo-American Store in which they sold books, postcards, groceries, paper, swimming costumes, Mahogany furniture, and sundry other items difficult to find elsewhere on the island.

The cat Hiddigeigei is a character in the 1853 narrative poem Der Trompeter von Sackingin by Victor von Scheffel and the cafe was popular with artists and intellectuals.

But there was more than that; Donna Lucia seems to have been something of a force of nature. As Bruno Manfellato puts it: At the end of the nineteenth century Lucia Morgano transformed an inn into a symbol of Capri.

The writer Compton MacKenzie wrote: “Receiving a glass of vermouth from the hands of the Lady Lucia Morgano is like drinking from the miraculous breast of Mother Earth”. It was said that she was so beautiful that there were those who faced the labors of the Grand Tour just to see her. Manfellato says:

…there was in her a fascinating mixture of cunning, tolerance and availability. In her, for example, the Caprese ability to transform innate hospitality into business is exalted: on the one hand it gave quality services, on the other it collected lightly, with a smile on its lips. Maximum commitment well paid, never sloppy. Not to mention that at chez Lucia you eat, drink, read, chat, but you also come to if you need a house, a maid, a cook, a master builder to repair a roof, a gardener to prune hydrangeas. And there is always an answer to everything. Under her watchful eye intertwine loves and relationships. Often licentious, cheeky, extreme as the costume of the travellers of the time wanted. More than that, she is the one who advises Fersen to leave the island for a while after a tragic accident in which a worker who worked at Villa Lysis loses his life. It is she who informs [German artist CW] Allers that the police are investigating the overly-lively parties held in Tragara…

Morgano’s postcards were commissioned from Richter of Naples (qv).

Morks & Geuze

Dordrecht, South Holland, Netherlands

• LITH. MORKS & GEUZE, DORDT.

Morks & Geuze, 13-15 Vischsstraat, printers and bookshop, Dordrecht. M & G printed local guide books and printed and published postcards. They also printed cards for others such as De Haan (qv) of Utrecht. In addition to their existing shop, Morks & Geuze continued the EE Haagens bookstore at 230 Voorstraat on his death in 1904. They produced an advertising calendar for 1898 from the steam printer and bookstore of Morks & Geuze. In 1898 & 99 Morks & Geuze published an Announcement magazine (Aankondigingenblad). In 1960 Morks & Geuze’s Boekhandel published Dordste Snippers, a book of black and white illustrations of scenes from Dordrecht, by Otto Dicke to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the business.

Source: VDP

George W. Morris

Portland, Maine, USA

• Published in Germany for G.W. Morris, Portland, Me.
• PRINTED IN GERMANY FOR G.W. MORRIS, PORTLAND, ME.

George W. Morris, photographer, Middle Street and 19 Smith Street, Portland. In 1895 he published Glimpses of the Great Pleasure Resorts of New England Embracing the Mountains of New Hampshire; Also the Hunting, Fishing, and Sea-Shore Resorts. In 1897 Morris Published Maine and its Scenic Gems Illustrating Many of the Most Beautiful and Interesting Places in the State of Maine. In 1899 he wrote a booklet Camden by the Sea and Mountains. Morris published postcards and sold them from his shop. In this he was an originator of some of the first colour lithography postcards in America Collector George C Smith compiled A catalogue of the undivided back post cards published by George W. Morris, Portland, Maine.

Rudolf Mosinger, Zagreb, Croatia

• R. MOSINGER J.P.W.
• R M anchor logo

Rudolf Mosinger (27 February 1865 to 9 October 1918) was a photographer and printer born in in Varaždin 50 miles north of Zagreb. Now the capital of Croatia, at this time, Zagreb was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire where it was known as Agram, a usage employed by Mosinger & Breyer, photographers at 8 Ilica in the city centre. The studio existed between 1894 and 1930, latterly under his son Franjo who survived the holocaust.

Mosinger learned photography from 1885 with Dr. Josef Szekely, one of the most prominent Viennese photographers of the time. In 1889, he returned to Varaždin where he opened a photography studio, in Kolodvorska Street (Bahnhofstrasse) and, soon afterwards, a branch in Rogaška Slatina, a spa resort now in eastern Slovenia followed. Mosinger gained popularity in quite a short time and the local press presented him as one of the best photographers in the country. His popularity at the time was significantly contributed to by photographing Archduke Joseph and his entourage during a military exercise held in 1892 in Pecs. Mosinger received praise from the Archduke himself and displayed the photographs in his studio. On 17 October 1894, Mosinger added a studio at 8 Ilica, Zagreb designed by architects Honigsberg and Deutsch.

A month later, he was joined as a co-owner by photographer Lavoslav Breyer, who had been running his own studios at 8 Marija Balerije Street and 10 Ilica Street. Mosinger was awarded two medals for his photographs of Croat landscapes and monuments at the 1896 Millennium Exhibition in Budapest, a national exhibition held on the occasion of the millennium celebrations of the Magyar conquest. His distinctive elongated prints became known as the Mosinger format.

Mosinger’s name is also linked to the emergence of Croatian cinematography. Only ten months after the screening of the Lumiere brothers’ films, in 1896, in Zagreb, in the Kola hall, Mosinger and Breyer organized the first public screening of live photographs them among the pioneers of the Croatian film industry. After Zagreb, the films were screened in Karlovac and Baraždin with apparatus and films owned by Samuel Hoffmann.

The firm was run jointly by Mosinger and Breyer until 1898. After parting ways with Mosinger, Breyer continued to work in Zagreb without a permanent studio until 1904, when he left the profession.

Mosinger formally left the photographic business on 31 December 1898, after parting ways with Breyer, and immediately founded the Photographic Institute in 1900. Four years later, he established a lithography department in that institute. Mosinger’s attempt to promote Croatian artists led to financial trouble in his Light Printing Institute. He tried to resolve this situation by turning his company into a joint stock company, but in 1912 he announced its liquidation. He also exhibited in the International Photographic Exhibition of the Croatian Society of Arts held in 1913 in the Museum of Arts and Crafts. Mosinger died in in a Viennese sanatorium. The photographic studio at 8 Ilica was run by his wife Amalia until May 1926. Agram is the historic Austrian-German name for Zagreb.

Sources: montenegro-canada.com; Jewish Biographical Lexicon

This card was produced by JPW who might have been Josef Popper of Vienna.

Henry Moss & Company, London

• H.M. & Co. London.
• HENRI MOSS & CO PORTRAIT POSTCARD SERIES 4320 “ACTRESSES AT HOME”

In the Autumn of 1902 CH Pascalis had left the company Pascalis Moss (qv) he had set up with Moss and it become Henry Moss & Company (qv). He changed the initials on the next printing of the Pascalis Moss cards and continued in business until about 1905. The company published drawn cards including scenes from Dickens, children, and animals and its 1902 ‘Actors & Actresses’ series of photographs. Moss’s Start off series gave the introductory words of message. Artists used by Moss included Raphael Kirchner (qv) and O. Anders (qv).

Karl Mossdorf

• K. Mossdorf

Karl Mossdorf (1865 to 1950) was the first city architect in Lucerne. Both his father and his son were architects there too. His son Carl Mossdorf (1901 to 1969) was a student of Le Corbusier. His father Gustav Mossdorf (1831 to 1907) created, the Gotthard building on the Schweizerhofquai.

Mossdorf was city architect from 1906 to 1925, earlier professor of technical drawing and descriptive geometry at the Lucerne Cantonal School and later had his own architecture office. In 1913/14 Mossdorf, having persuaded the Council not to put it out to tender, designed and supervised the construction of Moosmattschulhaus school in 15 months.

Mound City Post Card Company

St. Louis, Minnesota, USA

• Mound City Post Card Co., Publishers, St. Louis. Mo.

Mound City Post Card Company, publishers, St. Louis. This company published topographical photocards of a swathe of US states as far west as Idaho. Colorado mines often featured.

A striking feature of the site of St. Louis was the large number of Indian mounds. The soubriquet Mound City was aptly applied to the town and even after the mounds were used as construction-fill in the 19th century, the appellation stuck.

The earliest inhabitants far predate any European contact with the western hemisphere. Some 40,000 people lived centered at prehistoric Cahokia nearby. That culture died out; The population of Cahokia began to decline during the 13th century, and the site was eventually abandoned by around 1350. They left behind remnants of their society in Illinois and some two dozen mounds in present-day north St. Louis. Today only one survives, along with some photographs and a little dogleg road named Mound Street.

The relentless development of the 20th century took its own toll on Cahokia. But most of its central features survived, and nearly all of those survivors are now protected. At 4,000 acres, it is the largest archaeological site in the United States.

This Card: Billings is the largest city in the U.S. state of Montana. The hypenated use of the word Post-Card is an early step along the road to Post Card being a single word.

Henry Mounsey

Otley, Yorkshire, England.

• H. MOUNSEY, OTLEY.

Henry Mounsey, stationer, Otley, established 1859, published local topographicals into the divided-back era. To this day, Mounsey’s is a huge stationery and gift card store at 1 Market Street.

MP Madrid

• MP Madrid

MP Madrid seem to have been a major producer of postcards over a long period – they were still active during the Spanish Civil War (1936 to 1939) – but little seems to be known about them.

MP published cards of photographs posed by models, both child an adult, into the divided-back era. Their postcards included the customary photographs of actors and actresses. Divided-backs included photographs of the royal family taken by Veronés (Carlos Sánchez de Juan) and Christian Franzen as well as local topographicals. MP also reproduced coloured drawings of L. Porras.

William K Muchmore

Morristown, New Jersey, USA

• W K MUCHMORE STATIONER

William Kitchell Muchmore (18 September 1867 to 27 August 1945) was the leading stationer in Morristown. In 1895 he commissioned Morristown in Photo-Gravure, a viewbook of local Morristown attractions from the Albertype Company in Brooklyn, NY. This led naturally into postcards of the area. On 14 September 1900, the Morris County Chronicle Brevities included the news that W. K. Muchmore has installed a complete stock of school supplies, stationery and photographer’s materials in his store in the McAlpin Block.

In 1901 Muchmore was advertising Bicycles and Sundries at 3 McAlpin Block. Muchmore sold bicycles at his stationery store and later started a cycling academy. He was Captain of the Morristown Bicycle Club. In 1910, Muchmore put his name to a map of Morris County and, generally, his efforts seem to have lived up to his name: Vogt Brothers’ Complete Morris County New Jersey, Directory for 1897-98 advertised Muchmore’s Stationery and Art Store, describing him as engraver, stationer and dealer in books, pictures, fancy and staple stationery, school supplies, newspapers and periodicals. Lawn • Tennis, • Croquet, • Hammocks, • Etc., • Etc.; AGENT FOR COLUMBIA BICYCLES AND SUNDRIES. Bookbinding, Engraving, Plcture framing, In all Branches, at Short Notice.

Source: morristowngreen.com

Ugo Mugnaini, Florence, Italy

• Ugo Mugnaini – Firenze.

Ugo Mugnaini of Florence sold local topographical photocards into the divided-back era when he was at 3 Via Vaccereccis.

This card appears to have originated on a Turkish ship no doubt plying the Med.

Mühlstein Brothers

Offenbach am Main, Hesse, Germany

• Gebruder Mühlstein, Offenbach a M

Early postcards by Fritz Muhlstein of Offenbach on the River Main are for sale and it can be inferred that he was joined by his brother early on. Fritz Mühlstein married Paula Stiefel in 1899. The name of the company Mühlstein was deleted from the register of businesses in 1938. In 1939/40, the name of the company was still in the Offenbach address book, but they were probably no longer able to produce and trade. On 4 August 1941 Paula and Fritz Mühlstein moved from 78 Ludwigstraße to 31 Mittelseestrasse. On 27 September 1942 they were transferred to Theresienstadt concentration camp in the Czech Republic where he died on 29 January 1943. There is a memorial at 31 Mittelseestraße.

Source: Stadtwerke Offenbach

Muir, Marshall & Company

Port of Spain, Trinidad.

• Muir, Marshall & Co., Trinidad.

Muir, Marshall & Co., Marine Square, Port of Spain, published guide books about Trinidad and other local materials. In 1897 Muir Marshall Fancy Goods, Stationery & Groceries commissioned from Germany a souvenir plate celebrating Trinidad’s first 100 years. Muir Marshall’s local topographicals included an undivided back of their shop on the northern side of Marine Square (which was renamed Independence Square in 19620. A sign hanging there reads: “Stationery; Fancy goods; Photo goods; Job printing” Job printing is a nineteenth-century term for printing that uses display type and no more than a sheet or two of paper.

Muir, Marshall & Co., King street, were listed under Groceries in Delmar’s new, revised and complete classified trades directory and mercantile manual of Mexico, Central America, and the West India Islands 1889-90.

In the United States. Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce Trade Directory for 1915 the business was listed in Port of Spain under paper and paper goods, musical instruments and stationery and stationery goods. In 1920 they were at booksellers, stationers, music and gramaphone dealers at 64a Marine Square, where they also had a printing office. They advertised as the oldest and largest stationery establishment in the West Indes. A T Fanan was a mercantile clerk with them.

This card: This is a frontal view of the Roman Catholic Cathedral named the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Port of Spain. This Cathedral replaced the first Catholic Church ever built in Port of Spain. The first church was built of wood and clay 1781 on the site that is now Tamarind Square. The foundation stone for the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception was laid in March 1816 west of Tamarind Square, on the eastern end of Marine Square, now Independence Square. The church was consecrated 1832, completed in 1936 and in 1851 was ranked a Minor Basilica. One of the unique features of the Cathedral is a crypt beneath the building that houses the final remains of Catholic Church officials, including Archbishops interred here from 1828 to 2000. Postcard number 29. In August 2018 the Cathedral was for a week to facilitate cleaning and repair works after a 6.9 magnitude earthquake.

Muir & Moodie

Dunedin, New Zealand

• MUIR & MOODIE
• Muir & Moodie Issued by MUIR & MOODIE, Dunedin, N.Z. from their Copyright Series of Views
• Issued by Muir & Moodie, Dunedin, N.Z. from their Copyright Series of Views

Muir & Moodie New Zealand photographic studio, Moray Place, Dunedin. The firm of Burton Brothers was founded in about 1873. In 1881 Thomas Mintaro Bailey Muir joined the firm, retiring in 1891; and, about 1896, he and George Moodie purchased the business of the old firm. This included the photographic studio building on Moray Place which they made The Great Postcard Emporium. In the New Zealand Times of 21 June 1901 (Volume LXXI, Issue 4389) they advertised as photographic artists whose productions are abreast, in tone, tint, material and faithfulness of reproduction, of anything turned out by the most advanced in England or the Continent. Mr Muir is an artist, unexcelled in the Australasian colonies in portraiture work, Mr Moodie has no superior in landscape photography. Mr Moodie makes periodical trips to all the celebrated resorts of New Zealand and the outlying “Coral Islands.” Only recently Mr Moodie paid a special visit to the New Hebrides Group and obtained an extensive collection of landscapes from these beautiful islands, where the camera had not previously penetrated; and within the last two months he has taken an entirely new series of views of the Wanganui river. At the present time he is busy at Rotorua, to which place he made a special trip in order to secure pictures of the Maori reception of their Royal Highnesses the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York, in which he has been most successful. Many of their postcards were local and topical. The New Zealand Postcard Club has a list of their numbered cards.

Source: Art and My Life

This card: Lake Te Anau is the largest of the southern glacial lakes, covering an area of 344 square kilometres. The main body of the lake runs north-south and three large fiords reach out from its western side – these arms are called North Fiord, Middle Fiord and South Fiord. Rolling hill country characterises the eastern side of the lake; the western side is a magnificent wilderness of forest and mountains – the Kepler and Murchison Ranges rise to around 1700 metres above sea level. Source: newzealand.com

Budtz Müller & Company, Copenhagen

• B. M. & Co. Eneret

Bertel Christian Budtz Müller (26 December 1837 to 30 December 1884) photographer 21 Bredgade,Copenhagen

Budtz Müller qualified as a pharmacist and was then employed by Alfred Benzon with whom he opened a photography equipment shop at 21 Bredgade in 1862 converting it into a photographic institute with student programmes in 1863. From 1871 Muller traded alone as Budtz Müller & Company.

The firm offered a wide selection of high quality Copenhagen stereoscopies and photographs in large and small formats. Other images were of prominent cultural figures such as Hans Christian Andersen, actors in costumes, Danish art works and photographs and stereoscopies of Greenland recorded in 1866 and 1877.

Muller was appointed as court photographer in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Müller collaborated with Jean Christian Ferslew in introducing photolithography to the Danish market and created the first photolithographic maps for the Danish General Staff. In 1865 Müller wrote a number of articles about the history of photography in Den fotografiske Forenings Tidende.

Müller’s photographic studio in Bredgade was continued after his death for a few years by Ludvig Johan Offenberg (1863 to 1904). The company published tinted photocards of Copenhagen into the divided-back era (which began in Denmark on 1 June 1905). Muller’s successors* featured in Kraks 1909 Copenhagen Directory as a Photographic Trading House at 29 Bredgade selling cameras and paper. Meanwhile, Budtz Muller & Co advertised as art publishers at 23 Bredgade with the trade mark BM & Co.

*efterfølgere abbreviated to eftf

Fritz Müller

San Francisco, California, USA

• Fritz Müller, Publisher, San Francisco, Cal.

Fritz Müller, Publisher, San Francisco, published numbered local topographical photocards.

Not to be confused with: Fritz Müller who owned several German restaurants in San Francisco on Market and 4th Street.  The most famous was the Bismarck Restaurant, which later changed its name to The States Cafe in the WW1 era prompted by growing anti-German feeling in the US. Fritz Müller and Sons also catered to World fairs, including the Panama Pacific Exposition in 1915 at the Palace of Legion of Honor and published postcards to promote them. This Exposition was a world’s fair held from 20 February to 4 December 1915. Its stated purpose was to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal, but it was widely seen in the city as an opportunity to showcase its recovery from the 1906 earthquake. 
Source: SATELLITE BERLIN

This card: When railroad magnate and former California Gov. Leland Stanford and his wife, Jane Lathrop Stanford, lost their only child, Leland, Jr., to typhoid in 1884, they decided to build a university as the most fitting memorial, and deeded to it a large fortune that included the 8,180-acre Palo Alto stock farm that became the campus. The campus is located within the traditional territory of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe. The Stanfords made their plans just as the modern research university was taking form. The Boston firm Shepley, Rutan, and Coolidge collaborated with Frederick Law Olmsted to develop the university’s final architectural plan, with its distinctive arches, quadrangles and arcades. Leland Stanford Junior University – still its legal name – opened Oct. 1, 1891. The early years were difficult, however, as even the Stanfords’ wealth proved inadequate to their vision. After her husband’s death, Jane Stanford kept the fledgling university open through her leadership. The 1906 earthquake dealt a further blow, killing two people and destroying several campus buildings, some so new they had never been occupied.

Moritz Müller der Jüngere

• Müller. jun. Munchen PVK above Z

Moritz Müller the Younger (28 October 1868 to 17 December 1934) was one of a dynasty of four generations of artists from Munich. He was a son of the painter Moritz Müller the Elder and a grandson of Moritz Müller (Feuermüller). Müller painted game and hunting scenes and exhibited his works in throughout Germany. Themes of his paintings such as roaring deer, alpine glow, alpine huts and sunsets by the sea are frequent themes of late romanticism often seen as kitsch.

Mumm & Zaum, Brussels

• Mumm & Zaum, Editeurs, Bruxelles

Mumm & Zaum, pen and paper retailers, Brussels. Mumm & Zaum seem to have originated as engineers in Cologne, Germany – there is a letter scales indicator dating from 1880 in the Reichs-Postmuseum. They made pens and opened branches in Denmark and Belgium to retail them.

The Nordic Bookstore Gazette (Nordisk Boghandlertidende) published in Copenhagen in 1896 featured a large stock of standard steel pens and paper being sold from their branch at 4 Jernbanegade, Copenhagen. Th. Lassen’s name featured and was still associated in 1923 though by 1919 Th. Gross was also involved. The branch published Gruss aus cards of Copenhagen.

Max Willick was in charge of branch at 99 Boulevard Anspach in Brussels. It published Belgian topographical photocards. In 1913 it was advertising novelty items and wholesale office and classroom supplies.

Markus Munk, Vienna, Austria

• M.M. Vienne
• M.M. VIENNE.
• RAPHAEL TUCK & SONS “CONTINENTAL SERIES” 4043 M.M. VIENNA.

Vienna art-publishing house (1857 to 1938). Markus Munk (1827 to 1916) founded a paper shop in 1857 and a small book printer five years later. From 1893 the business had the legal form OHG (Offene Handelsgesellschaft – partnership). Munk attached great importance to well-designed printing presses and participated as one of the few Austrian company owners in the international sample exchange. Hugo Munk joined the company in 1907 and was the sole owner from 1911. In 1916 the book, the stone, the copper print and the heliogravure departments, an etching shop and an art embossment were all in use, and operated an art publishing house, and, in addition to quality commercial work, they produced works on paper and calendars. They published artist-drawn postcards throughout the Jugendstil/art nouveau period. Christmas and young women were recurrent subjects. Ethel Parkinson (qv) was among their regular artists.

Source: Der Verlag Munk

Widow of Pedro Muñoz and nephew

Toledo, Spain

• Vda de Muñoz y Sobo, Papeleria, Commercio 61*

* Viuda [widow] de Munoz y Sobrino [nephew], [Calle] Comercio 61 [61 Commerce Street]

Widow of Pedro Muñoz and nephew, Stationers, 61 Commerce Street, Toledo, published both view and religious souvenir of Toledo cards. By 1933, Mrs Muñoz was trading as colonial grocers and sausage factory in Ocaña, 52 kilometres away.

Source: todocoleccion.net

Murray & Company Limited

Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India

• Murray & Co. Ld. Lucknow.

Murray & Company Limited, general merchants, Lucknow. Murray was one of the prominent British establishments in Lucknow. By 1899 they were a long-established commercial house, wine merchants and mess purveyors. In 1899 Murray published the third edition of The Tourists Guide To Lucknow by Edward H. Hilton, one of the Beleaguered Garrison. This included an account of the relief of the British governmental headquarters in Lucknow, part of 1857–58 Indian Mutiny against British rule. Murray published the 5th edition in 1905. In 1900 Murray published A reprint of the Rent Act rulings 1871 to 1895. In 1911 they presented a cup for the best scientific boxing to the King’s Own Royal Lancaster Regiment.

G E Murrell

Lynchburg, Virginia, USA

• PUBLISHED BY G.E. MURRELL, LYNCHBURG, VA. PRINTED BY J.P. BELL COMPANY, LYNCHBURG, VA.

A family bearing the name of Murrell, from Mount Holly, N. J., settled in Lynchburg during the second quarter of the 18th century, and have descendants of the name still residing there. Two sons, John and Hardin, were postmasters in the town. John also was a merchant and accumulated a large fortune, which he liberally shared with his family. His sister married Samuel Claytor, a Lynchburg tobacconist. Senator Daniel married Julia, daughter of Dr. Edward Murrell of Lynchburg, a member of this Murrell family. From 1899 to 1904 George E. Murrell was a Democrat member of Virginia House of Delegates, the First and Oldest Continuous English-Speaking Representative Legislative Assembly in the Western Hemisphere.

Source: History of Campbell County, Virginia 1782-1926 by R. H. Early