Directory O

Oceana

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

• OCEANA SERIES B.

“Oceana” published topographicals of Sydney in Series A to D

Fergus O’Connor, Dublin

• FERGUS O’CONNOR, DUBLIN – Publisher to the Trade

Fergus O’Connor was born in Cork City, the son of Thomas and Ellen O’Connor. Thomas was a sergeant in the Royal Irish Constabulary originally from Co. Offaly, and Ellen was a native of Cork. In 1901 the family are listed as living in Number 2 Dyke Parade in Cork City, and Fergus, aged 25, was working as a clerk in a bakery. Sometime after this he started publishing picture postcards, mostly featuring Cork and its environs. He also published typical early 20^th century images of Ireland and the Irish, including thatched cottages and their interiors. Having spent the first years of his professional life in Cork, the family moved to Dublin. By 1911 they are recorded as living in 44 Eccles Street, where Fergus established his publishing business. Though he does not appear to have taken any major part in the 1916 Rising, O’Connor was interned, first in Dartmoor in 1916, and later transferred to Lewes Prison in 1917, most likely for publishing pamphlets such as the Oration of P.H. Pearse over O’Donovan Rossa’s Grave in 1915, which would have been seen by the British government as seditious material. He was one of the 120 Irish Prisoners in Lewes Gaol who signed a list, giving his prisoner number as 194, and his sentence as 3 years.

Source: The Cricket Bat that Died for Ireland

This card: Castletownbere, also known as Castletown Berehaven, is a town in County Cork in Ireland. It is located on the Beara Peninsula by Berehaven Harbour. The area is the setting for Daphne du Maurier’s 1943 novel Hungry Hill named after the nearby mountain of the same name.

Office Polygraphique, Switzerland

• Office Polygraphique, Lausanne
• OFFICE POLYGRAPHIQUE, VEVEY

Office Polygraphique, printers and publishers, 5 Rue Pépinet, Lausanne and Vevey. In 1902 they advertised various forms of photographic reproduction including printing in three colours. On 31 July 1904 the newspaper Le Genevois reported under the heading Illustrated postcards that the Office Polygraphique of Vevey has just published a postcard in several colours, a very nice arrival, on the occasion of the feast of non-commissioned officers to be held in Vevey. Quick sales were predicted. Vevey is a town in Switzerland in the canton of Vaud, on the north shore of Lake Geneva, near Lausanne. In Practical Suggestions for the development of American Export Trade With Directories Of The Chief Cities Of Switzerland, Haiti and Ecuador compiled for and published in 1908 by The National Business League of America, Office Polygraphique of Lausanne was listed under Photographic Supplies. Publications by the business included Technical paper on the project of a one-meter track railway and electric traction of Sierre-Vissoie-Zinal (1898), the Official Illustrated Journal of the Vaud Cantonal Exposition (1901) and La noël Humaine: Allégorie en deux tableaux by Albert Roth de Markus (1904).

This addressee: Nellie Warne seems likely to have been a sister-in-law of Prussian emigre Rudolph Klickmann (born 1843) who was living in Lambeth, then in Surrey, at the 1881 census. The census showed a household of Klickmann, his wife, Fanny Warne, and four children. Mrs Klickmann died in 1903, when they were living at Ondine Road, East Dulwich though this card posted on 2 September 1903 shows them at Lyndhurst, Ellerton Road, Surbiton Hill, Surrey. This correspondent in Bishop Auckland makes no reference to Mrs Klickmann having died. Klickmann remarried in 1908 and went to live in Battersea with his new wife, a Russian emigre. Klickmann’s daughter Emily Flora Klickmann (26 January 1867 to 20 November 1958) was a journalist, author and editor. She was the second editor of the Religious Tract Society‘s (qv) Girl’s Own Paper, but became best known for her Flower-Patch series of books of anecdotes, autobiography and nature description.

Source: peoplepill.com; find my past

Officina Poligrafica Romana, Rome

• OPR monogram OFFICINA POLIGRAFICA ROMANA
• Officina Poligrafica Romana.

By decree of 9 April 1903 Filosini Ettore, director of the Roman polygraphic workshop was made a Knight of the Order of the Italian Crown on the nomination of the Ministry of War In 1900 the Officina published the poetry of Giuseppe Cardarelli in R domo d’Orvieto and a number of textbooks around then. They published posters for Avanti, the Socialist Journal, in 1905. In 1910 they produced a Calendar advertising Omega watches. They were still publishing in 1917.

Sources: Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno D’Italia 14 July1905; Gazzetta Ufficiale del Regno D’Italia 27 April 1910

Samuel Ohashi, Seychelles

• S.Ohashi, Photographer, Seychelles

Samuel Ohashi, Japanese photographer, Seychelles. Ohashi took some of the earliest photographs of Seychelles. An Ohashi picture postcard addressed to Egypt and franked 8 May 1903 and re-addressed to Trieste was sold as the earliest recorded usage of a picture postcard mailed from the Seychelles. He published his work into the divided-back era under the name Mr S S Ohashi. As many other contemporary photographers did, Ohashi published cards of current events such as Governor Davidson’s visit to the opening of the Seychelles Carnegie Library in 1910.

Source: Seychelles Nation 21 October 2011

Ferdinand Ohlendorf

Galveston, Texas, USA

• Ferd. Ohlendorf, Galveston, Tex

Ferdinand H Ohlendorf, (October 1862 to August 1953) Galveston, Texas, emigrated from Germany as a young man and began a door-to-door magazine and newspaper service. Later he opened his own store, specialising in English and German books and souvenir postcards of Galveston which he published himself. An active member of the community, he was a mason, a member of Concordia Singing Society and president of the Galveston Suburban Improvement Company. Ohlendorf was witness to an application to patent a new comb-cleaner filed by Hugo Hess, of Galveston on 18 May 1901. In about 1897 Ohlendorf published Souvenir of Galveston Texas, an accordion-fold view book with 90 titled photolithograph images on glossy paper with 12 panels including bird’s Eye View of Galveston in 1897, prior to the 1900 hurricane. In 1906 he published Galveston Old and New by S.B. Southwick. He is buried with other members of his family in Evergreen Cemetery in Galveston under a gravestone written in German. Cards identifying him as publisher were produced by Adolf Selige (qv).

Sources: Galveston’s Broadway Cemeteries Kathleen Shanahan Maca (2015 Arcadia Publishing); Google Patents; usgwarchives.net

Conrad Oldenburg, Vyborg, Russia

• Conrad Oldenburg, Wiborg

Conrad Oldenburg (1854 to 1927) , bookseller, art dealer and photographer, Vyborg, then in Finland.

Vyborg is a town in, and the administrative center of, Vyborgsky District in Leningrad Oblast, Russia. It lies on the Karelian Isthmus near the head of the Vyborg Bay, 130 km (81 miles) to the northwest of St. Petersburg and 38 km (24 miles) south of Russia’s border with Finland, where the Saimaa Canal enters the Gulf of Finland. Located in the boundary zone between the East Slavic/Russian and Finnish worlds, Vyborg was formerly well-known as one of the few medieval towns in Finland. Vyborg has changed hands several times over the years,

Tsar Peter the Great captured Vyborg from Sweden in 1710 and made it the seat of the Vyborg Province of St. Petersburg Governorate. In 1744, Vyborg became the seat of the Vyborg Governorate which was renamed the Finland Governorate in 1802. One of the largest naval battles in history, the Battle of Vyborg Bay, was fought off the shore of the Vyborg Bay on July 4, 1790. After the rest of Finland was ceded to Russia in 1809, Emperor Alexander I incorporated the town and the governorate into the newly created Grand Duchy of Finland in 1811 which is where it was when Oldenburg was publishing postcards.

Following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the fall of the Russian Empire, Finland declared itself independent. During the Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland in 1939–1940, over seventy thousand people were evacuated from Vyborg to other parts of Finland. The Winter War was concluded by the Moscow Peace Treaty, which stipulated the transfer of Vyborg and the whole Karelian Isthmus—emptied of their residents—to Soviet control, where it was incorporated into the Karelo-Finnish Soviet Socialist Republic on March 31, 1940. As the town was still held by the Finns, the remaining Finnish population, some ten thousand people, had to be evacuated in haste before the handover. Thus, practically the whole population of Finnish Vyborg was resettled elsewhere in Finland.

Oldenburg was born in western Finland where his father founded one of the largest match factories in Europe. Oldenburg became interested in oil painting in his youth and began his career as an amateur artist and bookbinder. He moved to Wiborg with his family in 1873 as agent for an insurance company. Oldenburg became interested in photography and set up a photography club in May 1892.

In December 1890, Oldenburg opened a new bookstore at 37 Yekaterininskaya (Krepostnaya) Street selling Russian and European fiction, and magazines and children’s, educational and scientific literature and many other publications.  The store also sold paintings and artist materials as well as stamp and photograph albums. In July 1894 he recruited groups of students for courses in stenography.  Oldenburg reserved columns in the Vyborg Swedish-language newspapers Östra Finland and Wiborgsbladet for advertisements for his store and insurance agency.

As well as photographs in cabinet format ( 11 x 17 cm), in 1897, Oldenburg released an album of colour images of Vyborg.  By the end of 1898, he had photographed more than 80 views of Vyborg, the Karelian Isthmus, the territories of modern Finland and the nearby Mon Repos estate, now a park open to the public. Oldenburg opened a small printing house for the production of postcards, calendars, and postal envelopes. He produced photo albums, wall and desk calendars, Christmas and Easter cards. Oldenburg produced the first postcards with views of Vyborg and Mon Repos at the turn of the century using the phototype method. There isn’t much sign of this activity beyond the undivided-back era.

From June 1891 Oldenburg was a member of the board of directors of the Vyborg Telephone Company (Wiborgs nya telefonaktiebolag).  He was one of the founders of the Vyborg Friends of Art (Wiborgs Konstvänner) Association, where for a long time he served as chairman of the executive board and treasurer, arranging auctions of artwork. Under the patronage of the association, a school of drawing was founded, with 23 pupils in the spring 1897 term.

In 1910 and 11 Oldenburg sold the bookstore and transferred the insurance agency and retired to Helsinki although he spent long periods with relatives in New York and Berlin.

Sources: Vyborg (wikipedia); STATE HISTORICAL, ARCHITECTURAL AND NATURAL MUSEUM-RESERVE “PARK MON REPOS“ A.S.Salmanov

Harry Grant Olds

• H.G.Olds foto
• Foto H.G.Olds
• Cliche Olds
• FOT. OLDS
• Editor R. Rosauer, Buenos Aires. Neg Sr. H.G.Olds

Harry Grant Olds (1869 to 1943), born in Sandusky, Ohio, first came to Valparaiso in 1899, where he worked for the studio of Odber Heffer Bissett, then established himself in Buenos Aires a year later. His photographs were published in magazines such as La Ilustración Sudamericana and in the form of postcards by various publishers. Olds sold photographs to a number of important postcard publishers of Buenos Aires including Stephan Lumpert, Jacobo Peuser, F Weiss (qv), Kirchoff & Cía., GB Pedrocchi (qv), América Cristiana, Pita & Catalano and Mitchell. Except for the first two, all mentioned the photographer’s name on each card. It appears that the publishers did not acquire the exclusive use of the images, because there are published postcards by various firms with the same Olds photograph, and photographs taken in the first years of the century are on postcards published ten, twenty and even thirty years later. It indicates that postcards provided a very satisfactory business to a photographer who had a good stock of images and knew how to sell them.

Sources: H. G. Olds. News of an unknown Abel Alexander y Luis Priamo (Translated into English by Leigh Fisher); Collecting Picture Postcards of South America Hinnerk Onken also citing Luis Priamo, H. G. Olds: Fotografías, 1900–1943 (Buenos Aires, Argentina: Ediciones Fundación Antorchas, 1998.

This card: Parque Tres de Febrero, popularly known as Bosques de Palermo (Palermo Woods), is an urban park of approximately 400 hectares (about 989 acres) located in the neighborhood of Palermo in Buenos Aires. Located between Libertador and Figueroa Alcorta Avenues, it is known for its groves, lakes, and rose gardens (El Rosedal). Following the 3 February 1852 overthrow of strongman Juan Manuel de Rosas, his extensive northside Buenos Aires properties became public lands and, in 1862, a municipal ordinance provided for a city park on most of that land. On the initiative of Congressman Vicente Fidel López and President Domingo Sarmiento, one of de Rosas’ opponents, work began in 1874 on Parque Tres de Febrero.

The Omaha News Company

Omaha Nebraska, USA

• The Omaha News Company, Omaha Neb., Leipzig, Dresden

Omaha News Company, Omaha, a publisher and distributor of local view-cards and other printed materials for the American News Company. Omaha News was one of many newspapers in Nebraska in 1890. W D Baucker jr was their manager at 1417 Davenport, Omaha.

metropostcard.com [offline as at November 2022]; NEGenWeb Project

Oreste Onestinghel, Verona, Italy

• O. Onestinghel – Verona

Oreste Onestinghel, Stationery stores from 1888 at 54 Via Mazzini and 2 Piazza Erbe, Verona specialised in postcards and luxury pictures. A famous store in Via Mazzini, it still seems to be in business elsewhere in the city. As well as photo and illustrated topographical cards of Verona, Onestinghel published books of local interest including, in 1906, Illustrated guide of Recoaro and surroundings by G.P.Gobbi and, in the 1920s, a hardback book Souvenir of Ricoaro of postcard images. Recoaro Terme is a town and comune in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, Italy. It is, about 75 km from Verona and known for mineral spring waters. In 1919 he published ‘YELLOWBLUE’ Anthology of the poets of Verona. He published “GIALLOBLU’ Antologia dei poeti veronesi. “La Tecnografica” which sold for two Lire.

Orebro Konstindustri A.B.

Örebro, Sweden

• Orebro Konstindustri A.B.

Örebro Art Industry Limited issued a wide range of undivided-back postcards. These included photographs of Sweden and Palestine and artwork of rural life as well as at least one card showing money flowing out of a purse. Their earliest seems to have been a photograph of King Oscar II on a visit in 1898. Their card of a ram captioned Prize Boxer Appelqvist has caused some puzzlement. Their card of bicycles for four is also striking.

They were still issuing shares in December 1903 though this doesn’t seem to have been a good long-term investment.

The Orient-Royal Mail Line

• THE ORIENT-ROYAL MAIL LINE R.M.S. “OROYA”

The Orient Steam Navigation Company was formed in 1877 by John Anderson, the engineer for the Stockton and Darlington Railway, to run services from London to Australia. The venture was so successful that sailings were soon increased from monthly to fortnightly. From 1881, alternate sailings used the Suez Canal route, and the Cape route was abandoned altogether in 1883. By 1906, the Australian service became known as Orient-Royal Mail Line. The new partners did not get along, and Royal Mail pulled out of the partnership with Orient Line in 1909.

Source: Simplon The Passenger Ship website

Osnabrück Paper Factory, Berlin

• O.P.F. Berlin
• OPF in a trefoil

Osnabrück Paper Factory, 42 den Ritter-Strassse, Berlin specialized in embossed luxury cards. They also had sales and offices in Paris and London from 1900/01. The London branch, at 304 High Holborn, was managed by Walter Steinfeld. Löwenstein & Formstecher were the business behind the Osnabrück Paper Factory name which they used in marketing their postcards. Amongst many others, they made cards for Marques & Fiorillo, (qv) Aswan, Egypt.

Lea Formstecher of 2 Lankwitzstrasse SW (born Löwenstein 5 October 1833) married Jules Auguste Formstecher on 14 July 1858 in Munster Stadt, Westfalen, Germany and may have had something to do with this business though her dates are rather early for the postcard development.

I & M. Ottenheimer

Baltimore, Maryland, USA

• I. & M. OTTENHEIMER, BALTO., MD.

I. & M. Ottenheimer, publishers, 321 W Baltimore St, Baltimore. Ottenheimer Publishers was founded in 1890 by brothers Isaac and Moses Ottenheimer while they were both still in their teens. According to family legend, the business began with a one hundred dollar loan from an aunt; the brothers could use the funds toward any business of their choosing, provided it did not interfere with the Sabbath. Though their business originally centred on selling remaindered books, they soon made a name for themselves by selling compilations of joke books, parlour games, and fortune-telling manuals. They got the jokes by having an employee attend performances by leading comedians and write down the jokes that received the best audience reaction. The printing plates used for producing the joke books were donated to scrap drives during World War II. They also published numbered series of black-and-white photocards. The series for Pittsburg is numbered in the 300s beginning with the New Cathedral as 300. The company filed for bankruptcy in November 2001 and closed in 2002.

Source: wikipedia: Ottenheimer Publishers

Richard F. Outcault

• R.F. Outcault

Richard Felton Outcault (14 January 1863 to 25 September 1928) was an American cartoonist. He was the creator of the series The Yellow Kid and Buster Brown, and is considered a key pioneer of the modern comic strip. Outcault painted electric light displays for Edison Laboratories for the 1888 Centennial Exposition of the Ohio Valley and Middle Atlantic States in Cincinnati. This led to full-time work with Edison in West Orange, New Jersey, doing mechanical drawings and illustrations. Edison appointed him official artist for the company’s travelling exhibition in 1889 to 90, which included supervising the installation of Edison exhibits at the Exposition Universelle in Paris. While there he studied art in the Latin Quarter and added the second u into his surname.

Source: wikipedia: Richard F. Outcault

Gaston Ouvrard, Biarritz, France

• Cliché Ouvrard

Gaston Jean Ouvrard, (6 October 1863 to 26 August 1942) painter-photographer, 3 Avenue du Palais, Biarritz. In August 1892, he published an illustrated guide of Biarritz, Biarritz-Guide with many photographs which went into several editions. Ouvrard founded the Photo-Club of Biarritz in 1895. It had its seat at his studio. Six laboratories and a photographic library were at the disposal of the members. Photography competitions and excursions were planned every year.

Source: Le grimh

George E. Over, Rugby, England

• G.E. Over, Rugby

George Edward Over (1853 to 1937) bookseller, owned bookshops at 15 High Street, 3 High Street and the Market Place, Rugby. He also operated the Rugby Press which, in the 1890s, printed a number of the books in the Norman Colbeck Collection of Nineteenth-Century and Edwardian Poetry and Belles Lettres. The Rugby Advertiser of 8 May 1915 reported: A large number of shop assistants having joined the colours, the work falling upon those left behind has become more arduous, and in many establishments it is difficult for them to obtain proper meal-times. In some towns tradesmen are closing their shops entirely for an hour at mid-day. Several Rugby tradesmen have decided to adopt the system, and Mr GE Over announces in our columns that he will begin on May 17 at his book shops, closing from 1 to 2pm. Also on my card of Market Place, Rugby are the initials ETWD, indicating that it was published for Over by Dennis (qv).

Source: Our Warwickshire; A Bookman’s Catalogue Vol. 1 A-L T. Bose,Paul Tiessen (UBC Press, 1 Nov 2011)

Owens Brothers Hillson Company, Boston, Massachussets, USA

• OWENS BROS. – HILLSON CO., BOSTON, MASS

Owens Brothers Hillson Company, Boston published a wide variety of postcard types in black & white, monotones, and colour lithography. These included cards depicting actresses, black people, comics, artist-signed cards, and national view-cards. Their most unusual cards were of views printed on aluminium. They also had offices in Berlin and Leipzig. They are listed as dissolved by statute in 1903.

Source: Massachussetts State Archives