Directory V

A. Vafiadis & Company

Port-Said, Egypt

EGYPTIAN CIGARETTE MANUFACTURY A. VAFIADIS & Co. Main Street PORT-SAID

Theodore Vafiadis & Company were major manufacturers of high class cigarettes in Cairo (between 1870 and 1916. They were the first recorded as having imported Egyptian cigarettes to India^¹. A Vafiadis, had a shop at Rue du Commerce in Port Said but it is difficult to know what the link is between them.

Paul Valat, Castres, Tarn, France

Pap de luxe E. Sagnes, Castres – Cliche Valat

Paul Valat, art photographer, 24 Place Nationale, Castres. Valat’s studio produced carte de cabinet portraits. His images were bequeathed to the museum of Castres around 1890, some time before Ernest Sagnes (qv) used the ones of the locale in his postcards.

Valentines of Dundee Limited

Dundee, Scotland

Valentines’ Series
Valentine’s Series
VALENTINE’S SERIES
V. & S. SERIES
Valentine Ltd., Dundee
Photo by V. & S., Ltd., Dundee
The Valentine & Sons’ Publishing Co., Ltd. Montreal and Toronto Printed in Great Britain Published by The Canada Railway News Coy., Ltd., Toronto, and R. & O. Navigation Coy.

James Valentine of Dundee, later to become the founder of a hugely successful photography business, set up his own business as an engraver and copperplate and lithographic printer in 1838.

In 1846, Valentine issued a series of illustrated envelopes on behalf of the League of Universal Brotherhood which advocated ocean penny postage. Such pictorial envelopes served the same purpose in the 40s as postcards did 50 or 60 years later^². In about 1850, he published an engraved envelope with anti-slavery messages and illustrations. As a member of the Congregational church he would have been a supporter of the anti-slavery movement which by the mid-19th century was very much focused on slavery in the USA.

Valentines of Dundee Ltd, established in 1851, were early exponents of photographic processes and later grew to become one of the largest photographic companies in the country. By the late 1890s Valentines had mastered collotype printing, a lithographic technique that was used extensively for the production of picture postcards in the early 20th century. The company produced many thousands of cards with views of Scotland, England, Wales and further afield before ceasing postcard production in 1970. They kept their postcard images up to date and commercially viable by freely adding and removing features from their negatives^³. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/imu/cache/multimedia/969300.pdf is a guide to Valentines’ images. The earliest postmark on one of their cards is dated 1 March 1898^⁴.

M. Valentini, Milan, Italy

EDIT M. VALENTINI – MILANO

M. Valentini of Milan published topographical photo-cards of places throughout Italy including photographs by the famous photographer Federico Castellani.

Ferdinand Valfer, Berlin

Ferd. Valfer, Berlin

Ferdinand Valfer (29 January 1878 to 1941) of Berlin published topographical cards of London for the British market. The Valfers were a Jewish family engaged in commerce. Ferdinand Valfer featured in a German Minority Census in 1939.

Fr van Brutzel, Brussels, Belgium

Edit. Fr. v. Brutzel. Tulip in a diamond trade mark

Fr van Brutzel, 36 Grand Place, Brussels published local topographic photo-cards into the divided-back era. Later cards were published by H.P. and cards of the Exposition Universelle Bruxelles 1910 were published by Francois all from this address. Nuss of Amsterdam used the same logo which suggests that both had cards produced by the same people.

Constant Van Cortenbergh, junior, Brussels

C. V. C.
EDIT C. V. C. BRUX
Edit. C. Van Cortenbergh, Bruxelles.

Constant Van Cortenbergh, (died 1949) printer, 9 Rue des Longs Chariots and 12 Rue de l’Empereur, Brussels, printed posters, postcards, photos and books. Van Cortenbergh’s father started the business in the 19^th century and in 1894 published a plan & guide to the Anvers Exposition and printed the political pamphlet Natural breeds of Liberalism. He published postcards in chromolithography. Alphonse Mucha designed a calendar for him for 1902. He was an honorary member of the Club d’amateurs photographes de Belgique. In February 1915 Van Cortenbergh launched L’Événement illustré⁵ newspaper. He continued working in rotogravure into the 1940s when he printed the first appearance of Tintin.

Désiré van Dantzig

Brussels, Belgium

D.V.D.

Désiré van Dantzig, stationer and postcard publisher, Brussels published numbered viewcards of Belgium. DVD Cards numbered from 5000 to 13674. Many cards were printed by Engel-Lievens (qv). By 1905, van Dantzig’s son had joined the business and their work had a commercial focus. Their series Great Industries of Belgium included some striking industrial scenes^⁶.

Carl van den Boogaart

Wiesbaden, Hesse, Germany

General-Vertrieb^⁷: Carl v. d. Boogaart, Wiesbaden
Carl v. d. Boogaart, Wiesbaden CvdB logo

Carl van den Boogaart (1871 to 1926), Wiesbaden published his earliest photocards from Wiesbaden and Munich. He had cards printed by Knackstedt & Näther and published topographicals into the 1920s;

Peter van den Ende

Rotterdam, Netherlands

P. F. van den Ende, Rotterdam.
P. F. v. d. Ende, Rotterdam.

Peter (Petrus Franciscus) van den Ende, born in Amsterdam, started a Couranten-Lees-Inrigting on the Vismarkt in Rotterdam around 1867. This was a place where people could read the newspaper for payment and while enjoying a cup of coffee. He printed his photographs of cityscapes of Rotterdam and Dutch ethnographicals and sold them as postcards. This was the beginning of the office trade and the printing business, which his son Louis and successive generations continued^⁸. Currently Van den Ende BV trades as The Notepad Factory from Oss in Netherlands, a leading specialist in the field of development and production of private label and promotional writing pads.

Theodore van den Heuvel

Brussels, Belgium

Th. van den Heuvel, éditeur, Bruxelles.

Theodore Guillaume Alexandre van den Heuvel (19 January 1859 to about 1915) postcard editor^⁹. As a youth in Brussels van den Heuvel collected stamps and, around 1879, opened one of the first stamp shops in Brussels, in the Warmoesbergstraat. He was said to be residing in London when he married in 1879. In the summer of 1881 he and his wife emigrated to the US where he opened a stamp dealership in New York. The New York city directory of 1883 shows him as a stamp dealer at 79 Nassau Street in Lower Manhattan. Van den Heuvel became a US citizen in 1897 and immediately returned to Belgium. Van den Heuvel quickly spotted the potential of the new craze for view-cards and opened a store in Brussels, selling stamps, postcards, and various photographs. He went on to issue, generally numbered, view-cards of a large number of Belgian towns^¹⁰. Van den Heuvel also published ethnographicals and a series of postcards featuring monochrome images of the publishers of Belgian newspapers bursting through the front pages of their publications. He issued a black-bordered card commemorating the Belgian Queen after she died in 1902.

This advertising card gives further insight into his business at some stage.

Hermann van der Moolen

Geldern, North Rhine Westfalia, Germany

H v d M logo in a shield

Hermann van der Moolen,(1843 to c. 1920) publisher, Geldern^¹¹. On 21 May 1889 Hermann van der Moolen senior, businessman from Geldern bought a plot on the railway station in Geldern with residential building, warehouse and back buildings from the Geldern city. In an 1894 transaction van der Moolen was described as a manufacturer and merchant^¹². He published sheets of educational images printed in Munich. Van der Moolen was a liberal and, as a political activist, a champion of the bourgeois freedom ideals of the 1848 revolutions.

Julius van de Sande Bakhuyzen

Uitg. Joseph Frankfort, Arnhem v.d. Sande Bakhuizen

Julius Jacobus van de Sande Bakhuyzen (18 June 1835 to 21 October 1925) was a Dutch etcher and painter in the Hague School. He took his first art lessons from his father, Hendrik van de Sande Bakhuyzen, who was a painter and thereafter studied at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague.

In 1871 he won the royal medal at an exhibition in Amsterdam with his painting Pond in the Hague Forest. From 1875 he spent most summers in Drenthe, often with his sister Gerardine, who also painted.

His works include mainly landscapes often with trees and horse-drawn hay wagons – in paintings, postcards and on tiles. Joseph Frankfort of Arnhem published postcards of his work.

H.M. van Dorp & Company

Jakarta, Indonesia.

Uitg. H.M. van Dorp & Co.

H.M. van Dorp & Company, Batavia, the capital of the Dutch East Indies between 1619 and 1949.

In 1856 van Dorp was advertising his bookshop in Batavia in the Nederlandsche Spectator. In 1866 he published Banking and Banks in the British Indies. A Historical Sketch (in Dutch) by N.P. van den Berg. In 1872 he published A Seaport For Batavia: Collection of Official Documents for the Jakarta Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In 1874 van Dorp produced a set of albumen silver photographs of Aceh Province, mounted on thick cream board. Van Dorp printed the Dutch-language newspaper Java Bode as well as the vernacular paper Hindia-Nederland. In 1882 when the 1856 Press Act was used to stop production of the Dutch newspaper, this also affected the publication of Hindia-Nederland. The bookstore functioned until 1972.

Not to be confused with: G. C. T. van Dorp of Semarang, also a publisher.

Source: PRINT POWER AND CENSORSHIP IN COLONIAL INDONESIA, 1912-1942 Nobuto Yamamoto

This card: The Waterloo Monument (or Atjeh-Monument) was built in Wilhelmina Park to commemorate the death of Dutch soldiers in the Aceh War, an armed military conflict between the Sultanate of Aceh and the Kingdom of the Netherlands which was triggered by discussions between representatives of Aceh and the United States in Singapore during early 1873. The war was part of a series of conflicts in the late 19th century that consolidated Dutch rule over modern-day Indonesia. The campaign drew controversy in the Netherlands as photographs and accounts of the death toll were reported. Isolated bloody insurgencies continued as late as 1914 and less violent forms of Acehnese resistance continued to persist until World War II and the Japanese occupation. Source: wikipedia

Hotel Vandyke, London

THE HOTEL VANDYKE, CROMWELL ROAD, QUEEN’S GATE, LONDON, S.W.

The Hotel Vandyke, Cromwell Road, London SW7 was one of three hotels near to his studio at Buckingham Palace Road owned by Carl Vandyk (17 January 1851 to 18 November 1931) a successful London photographer. Born in Bunde, Germany, from 1882 Vandyk took images of the British Royal family including Queen Victoria, King George V as well as other notables such as Alexander I of Yugoslavia, Christian X of Denmark, Buffalo Bill and Enrico Caruso. Carl’s son Herbert Vandyk (1879 to 1943) took over the family business in 1913 after studying in London, Berlin and Paris and went on to accumulate 22 Royal Warrants.

In the 1920s Vera, Countess Cathcart (1891 to 1993) lived at the Vandyke Hotel. Where she went from the hotel was not clear to a receiver in a bankruptcy who was due to pay her funds. He advertised this in the London Gazette of 11 September 1925 describing her as Femme Sole, a term distinguishing her from married women who, under English law, had no independent commercial personalities from their husbands.
Cathcart arrived in New York in February 1926 armed with a copy of her play Ashes of Love and dreams of Broadway fame. However, instead of becoming a star or literary sensation, the Countess ended up a different kind of celebrity, an international cause célèbre who introduced the concept of moral turpitude to people on both sides of the Atlantic. Immigration officials boarded her ship as it entered New York Harbour. In a routine check of first-class passengers, the inspectors discovered that, five years earlier, the Countess’s marriage to her second husband, the Earl of Cathcart, had ended in divorce. Another member of the British aristocracy, the Earl of Craven, was named as the cause of the divorce. Cathcart had left her husband—some thirty years her senior—and their three children to run off to South Africa with the married Earl of Craven. Their positions among England’s minor nobility added to the tabloid quality of the scandal.
Immigration officials declared that since Cathcart was an adulterer, she was guilty of a crime of moral turpitude and excludable under law. Cathcart was unrepentant, despite the very public moral opprobrium cast down upon her. “I have done nothing in my life that I am ashamed of,” she told reporters. The affair with the Earl of Craven had quickly gone sour in South Africa and had inspired the play which was thinly-veiled autobiography.
While Cathcart stewed at Ellis Island, the Earl of Craven was actually in New York, staying with an uncle on Park Avenue. His wife was sick and had come to New York for medical care and the Earl was there to be with her. This only added to the soap opera nature of the case. Why am I to be deported, if the Earl of Craven is to be allowed to remain here? He has no more right to be in America than I have. If I am guilty, so is he. Officials argued that since the Earl had declared himself married, he did not attract the attention of officials. This explanation did little to quell the complaints of a pernicious sexual double standard.
Ellis Island officials were aware that their decision was being scrutinised and sent an inspector up to Park Avenue to interview the Earl of Craven. Meanwhile, Cathcart spent her time at Ellis Island writing her next play, entitled Who Shall Judge?, an autobiographical account of her detention.
Since officials were adamant that Cathcart not be let into the country, they had no choice but to order an arrest warrant for the Earl of Craven on the same charge. Anticipating the move and no doubt uncomfortable that his affair was once again fodder for the press, the Earl of Craven fled to the Ritz Carlton in Montreal.
The 1920s were a time of greater freedoms for women, personified by the fun-loving flapper. These women challenged Victorian-era notions of the proper place of women. Vera Cathcart was just such a modern woman. I think all persons should be at liberty to do what they choose she said. Cathcart symbolized the sexual liberation and right to self-expression of women freed from the conventions of middle-class morality.
Yet traditional morality still held sway with government officials. Despite the national and international uproar, Cathcart remained at Ellis Island, albeit in a private room. In fact, she claimed to be quite comfortable and was surprised by conditions on the island, compared to the horrors she had read about in English newspapers.
A federal judge ordered that Cathcart could stay in the country as long as she liked. Government lawyers, reeling under the embarrassing publicity of the case, did not put up much of a fight.
Cathcart could now attend to her theatrical career. The notoriety led a producer to offer her $5,000 for her play, as well as a percentage deal on gross receipts and motion picture rights. But when Vera Cathcart sailed back to England at the end of March less than two months after her arrival, she told reporters that her treatment at Ellis Island was kind and generous when compared to what she received from theatre critics.
Source: erenow wikipedia

The Van Noy Railroad News Company

Kansas City, Missouri, USA

The Van Noy Railroad News Co., Kansas City

The Van Noy Railroad News Company, Kansas City. In 1893, Ira Clinton Van Noy formed a retail cigar and news business at 1076 Union Avenue, in Kansas City. On July 26, 1897, he joined with two of his brothers, Charles S. Van Noy and J.L. Van Noy, along with G.W. Krebs of St. Louis, to incorporate the Van Noy Railroad News Company. Railroad news services generally sold magazines, newspapers, books, tobacco products, fruits, nuts, and novelties from newsstands located in train stations, by the use of a news butch, a young man who walked through the train making sales. As the business flourished, the Van Noy brothers became prominent members of local Kansas City society. I.C. Van Noy, the eldest brother, served as president of the company, and the youngest brother, Henry Clay Van Noy, also joined the company when he came of age. The Van Noy Railroad News Company grew rapidly after securing large contracts with Missouri Pacific Railway and its subsidiary, the St. Louis, Iron Mountain and Southern Railway. In the era before dining cars were carried on trains, Van Noy eating houses were established at points along the 7,500-mile Missouri Pacific system to feed passengers. Later, at important terminals and train crew division points, Van Noy hotels were constructed to house both travellers and railroad train crews laying over between trips. Reflecting the success of the company, in 1909 both I.C. Van Noy and C.S. Van Noy constructed large homes on land at 6700 to 6800 Elmwood in Kansas City. The two homes were added the National Register of Historic Places in 1987. By 1910, the Van Noy Railroad News Company controlled sales distribution along 32,000 miles of railroad. The Company also had 52 hotels and restaurants, 20 concession stores, 21 distribution offices and about 1,600 employees. In 1912, the company name was changed to the Van Noy Railway Hotel and News Company, reflecting the company’s increased emphasis on the hotel side of the business^¹³.

Oscar van Stalle, Brussels

O.V.S. Bruxelles
Edit. O.V.S. Bruxelles

Oscar Van Stalle was appointed director of the newly-founded Brussels Vaudeville Théâtre in 1884. He collaborated with his son Paul Van Stalle, born on 8 November 1908, who was a well-known playwright between the two world wars.

Varischi Artico & Company

Milan, Italy

Varischi Artico & C. Milano.

Arturo Varischi and Giovanni Artico (born 1868) photographers, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Milan. In 1900, Varischi and Artico became the owners of the portrait studio and photo laboratory of Leone Ricci in Milan, where they had both been trained. Ricci had started his daguerreotype business before 1850 and was thus one of the earliest photographers in Milan. His studio had a long history of portraying the Milanese bourgeoisie and aristocracy and Varischi & Artico continued this tradition. They portrayed many stars of the Italian silent cinema, like Lyda Borelli, Dina Galli and Mercedes Brignone^¹⁴ and other celebrities such as the composer Puccini. They also took photographs of Popes Benedict XV and his successor, Pius XI and Artico was awarded the title of pontifical photographer. Artico’s granddaughter is still in business as a studio photographer^¹⁵.

Paul Vedie

Caudebec-en-Caux, Normandy, France

Librairie P. Vedie
Librairie-Papeterie P. VEDIE – Caudebec-en-Caux Colliections ND Phot Etablissements Photographiques de NEURDEIN Freres. – Paris

Paul Védie, bookshop owner and publisher, Place du Marché, Caudebec. One of a number of topographical postcard publishers in Caudebec, in 1889 he also co-published a guide to the area. The business was was founded in 1812 by Constant Vedie, son of a farmer from Criquebeuf. Paul Védie, of the third generation, also sold newspapers while diversifying his activities to articles for painters and photographers, optics, watchmaking, jewellery, sewing machines. He also published an edition of the complete Guide to Caudebec-en-Caux and its surroundings by Georges Rondel. His son Henry took over the business^¹⁶.

Emile Veeck, Brussels

E.V. à B.

Emile Veeck, printer, 24, rue Impériale, Brussels published undivided-back topographical photocards of Belgium, some of them numbered and some chromolithograph with glitter. They also sold cards posed by cute children.

This card: Today this neoclassical building houses only the Court of Assizes and the Court of Appeal following the construction of a modern courthouse on the outskirts of the city which solved a recurring problem of lack of space.

Vegnios & Zachos

Cairo & Luxor, Egypt

Vegnios & Zachos. Cairo & Luxor

Vegnios & Zachos, Booksellers, Cairo & opposite the steamboat-wharf in Luxor. D. Vegnios & N. Zachos operated as Savoy Booksellers in Shari Kasr en-Nil opposite the Savoy Hotel in Cairo. In about 1900 they published A Photographic souvenir of Egypt of 30 photographs of antiquities and people including Crocodile Hunters. They published numbered topographical and ethnographical black-and-white photo-cards.

Velten, Karlsruhe, Germany

EDIT J. VELTEN KARLSRUHE
CARTOLINE POSTALI ARTISTICHE DI VELTEN EDIT. J. VELTEN KARLSRUHE
VELTEN’S KUNSTLERPOSTKARTE VERLAG DER HOFKUNSTHANDLUNG J. VELTEN IN KARLSRUHE

In 1820 German art dealer, Johann Velten founded an art publishers and bookshop at 233 Lange Strasse, Karlsruhe. Towards the end of 1826, he was allowed to open a book printing plant. From January 1830 he was also allowed to print foreign books. In 1832 Velten opened a second store which focused on the publication of music scores and art books which he abandoned in 1838/39. Meanwhile he had founded a branch of his business in St. Petersburg in 1837. In 1840 Velten sold both the house in the Long Street and parts of his company, including the presses, to his son-in-law, Egon Fürst. Velten then remained in Karlsruhe and opened an art shop at 23 Herrenstraße around 1844. Around 1853 he took his son Sigmund as a partner in the art shop. After the two had been appointed Court book dealers in 1854, the company traded as Hofkunsthandlung Johann Velten. After the death of Johann Velten in March 1864, Sigmund traded until 1892 when he sold the company to Carl Kellner, who continued to operate under the prestigious name. Kellner extended the business of copperplate engravings, etchings, photo engravings, photographs, books, paintings and drawings to include postcards, the new mass medium of the time^¹⁷. Carl Kellner’s son Rolf Kellner (1897 to 1991) worked as a photographer in the publishing house from 1924, trading from 1949 under the name Photo and publishing house Rolf Kellner (formerly Velten). The business ceased in 1961. In 1976 Rolf Kellner donated 25,000 postcards (some with negatives) to the General Land Archives^¹⁸.

Francesco Verderosa

Palermo, Sicily, Italy

Edizione F. Verderosa, Palermo

Francesco Verderosa, Palermo published local topographicals into the divided-back era, many of them produced by Purger of Munich. In 1920 he was at 364 Corso [now via ?] Vittorio Emanuele. Palermo is the capital of the Italian island of Sicily.

Frederick Vester & Company

Jerusalem

Fr. Vester & C., Jerusalem
Edition Fr. Vester & Co., Jerusalem.

The American Colony was a colony established in 1881 by members of a Christian utopian society led by Anna and Horatio Spafford. Now a hotel in East Jerusalem, it is still known by that name today^¹⁹. German-Swiss member Frederick Vester established the colony’s most profitable commercial enterprise, the Vester & Co. – American Colony Store. Vester came from the city’s nearby German Colony, a neighbourhood established by members of Germany’s Templar society. The store was located in the Old City near Jaffa Gate and dealt in artefacts, crafts, and wares of the Middle East. John D. Whiting, the first baby born to the core group of American Colony pioneers once they arrived in the Old City and later a deputy American Consul in Jerusalem entered into this business partnership. He also used his Arabic-language skills and his extensive knowledge of regional geography to lead tours for visiting archaeologists, scholars, and religious travellers^²⁰. The Colony had an oath of celibacy, not allowing members to marry which wasn’t broken until Bertha Spafford, Horatio and Anna’s daughter, wanted to marry Vester^²¹. In 1950, Bertha Spafford Vester, the colony’s latter-day matriarch, wrote a memoir and family history Our Jerusalem: an American family in the Holy City, 1881-1949.

Under the leadership of East Indian immigrant and Christian convert Elijah Meyers, Colony photographers documented Jerusalem and, from 1897, their work was distributed by Vester in his shop. By 1907, they were producing about twenty to twenty-four thousand photographic prints and about two thousand glass lantern slides in the tourist season. After gaining commercial momentum in 1898 by selling news photographs of German Kaiser Wilhelm’s visit to the Holy Land, teams of photographers began travelling the Levant, selling images to National Geographic. Others focused on documenting the life and work of the Colony members, and creating meticulously detailed landscape tableaus to sell to tourists. The department operated from 1898 to 1934, with about 15 photographers focusing their energies on an array of photographic genres^²². Vester’s postcards were local topographicals and rural scenes some of which were printed in Germany by Hermann Striemann (qv).

Victoria Stamp Market

Melbourne, Australia

V.S.M Universal View Card.

The Melbourne Exhibition hall was constructed for the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880 and is still in use for exhibitions. Now a Unesco World Heritage site, it epitomises a time when international trade and faith in industrial progress were taken to new levels. For the colony of Victoria, the building symbolised its capital city’s transition from backwater to a world-focused metropolis. The architect of the exhibition building (the word “Royal” wasn’t added until 1980) was the prolific Joseph Reed, whose buildings helped to make Melbourne one of the great Victorian cities. Set in Carlton Gardens, the exhibition building’s most remarkable features are its dazzling white facade, and a dome modelled on Brunelleschi’s Florence cathedral. Inside, the decor featured allegorical murals, the words “Victoria Welcomes All Nations”, and a mighty pipe organ

Victoria Stamp Market, 325 Collins Street, Melbourne. Johann Fritz Pleus (1865 to 24 May 1939) stamp dealer was born in Osnabruck, Germany. was born in 1865. Pleus used the Tivoli Club a German social club in Abbotsford (an inner Melbourne suburb) for correspondence as late as July 1902. By December 1903 he was trading as Victoria Stamp Market from Collins Street, premises he described as the best fitted in Melbourne, no expense having been spared.
In 1907 Norbert Albert Itubens was involved in the business with Pleus. In June 1915 Ituben’s wife brought an unsuccessful action to recover the balance of the value of shares in a business, money alleged to have been received by a solicitor on her behalf.
In old age Fritz Pleus was resident in Flinders, Victoria a a seaside town 100 kilometers to the south. He died in 1939 in Surrey Hills, at his home, 4 Benwerrin Road survived by his wife.

Source: Stamp Dealers and Commercial Philately in Colonial Australia

Vierbucher, Milan, Italy

Ed. Vierbücher

Edizioni Vierbücher was a publishing house at 18-20 via Brera, Milan that produced a large number of undivided-back topographicals of Northern Italy.

Vierbucher sent one of his undivided-backs to GB Gozzi at his card shop in Modena: I have the honour to inform you of the forthcoming arrival of my traveller Mr Schrievers Giacomo. As always he will bring all the news of the day Sincerely / ED. VIERBUCHER / Price of this postcard, LIRE 40 per thousand, ex-Milan.

Source: Charter of Cultural Heritage of Friuli Venezia Giulia

E. Vierbücher

S. Margherita – Ligure

E. Vierbücher, S. Margherita – Ligure

E. Vierbücher, postcard publisher, Santa Margherita Ligure a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Genoa in the Italian region Liguria, located about 35 kilometres (22 mi) southeast of Genoa, in the area traditionally known as Tigullio.

Not to be confused with: Vierbücher, a publishing house in Milan.

Ed. Vierbücher, Milano

Ed. Vierbücher was a publishing house in 18-20 via Brera, Milan that produced a large number of undivided-back topographicals of Northern Italy.

Vierbucher sent one of his undivided-backs to GB Gozzi at his card shop in Modena: I have the honour to inform you of the forthcoming arrival of my traveller Mr Schrievers Giacomo. As always he will bring all the news of the day. Sincerely / ED. VIERBUCHER / Price of this postcard, LIRE 40 per thousand, ex-Milan.

Source: Charter of Cultural Heritage of Friuli Venezia Giulia

Views Limited, Bradford, England

Views Ltd Bradford in a logo where the words are contained in an oval created by an extension of the V

Views Limited, Piccadilly, Bradford was registered on 5 November 1898 and, as it seems only to have published undivided-backs, was probably not long-lasted.

Joseph-Marie Villard

Quimper, Brittany, France

Collection VILLARD, Quimper

In 1865 Joseph Villard, (died 1898) opened his photography workshop at 15 Rue des Gentilhommes, Quimper when he was 26. The young photographer had the brilliant idea of producing series of photos on costumes and Breton landscape for tourists. Villard’s photographs of men and women in traditional Breton dress inspired engravings in the Paris International Exposition of 1867. Around 1870, Villard opened a second workshop at 42 Rue Kéréon. Villard’s son Joseph-Marie joined the family business as a photographer in 1890 and continued it on the death of his father as a photographer-publisher at 4 rue Saint-François. While continuing as a portraitist, he also issued postcards. Joseph-Marie’s numbered ethnographic series and topographicals are a remarkable and rich history of Quimper and Brittany more generally^²³. He printed the address side of his cards entirely in Breton^²⁴.

This card: James Buchanan Mirrlees, a wealthy Glasgow businessman, acquired 24 acres of land north of Great Western Road in 1869. He employed the architect James Boucher to build an Italianate villa with conservatory, stable block and greenhouses. The newly-built house was surrounded by the fields of Kelvinside, which was still largely rural. In 1898 James Cowper Russell, of Russell & Forrester, wholesale warehousemen, 12 Miller Street, lived at the Gardens, Redlands, Kelvinside. This was presumably part of Mr Mirrlees’ estate. Russell’s partnership with William Forrester was dissolved on 19 May 1900 and he set up with James Lang Wilson as Russell & Wilson.
Redlands House was converted in the early 1920s to become Redlands Hospital for Women. The hospital was closed in 1978 and the building became a Scottish Ambulance Service training centre.

Alexander Vincents Kunstforlag^²⁵

Copenhagen

A V Kbh

Alexander Vincents Kunstforlag was founded on 23 October 1890 by Alexander Vincent (1861 to 1916) at 10 Kronprinsessegade Copenhagen. He styled himself as a merchant. He had married Agnes Lodberg (1864 to 1943) the year before. Alex. Vincent was probably inspired by his mother-in-law to be paper wholesaler and art publisher. His earliest works were larger printed images for framing which it was very easy, later, to colour and shrink to make a postcard^²⁶. In the years around 1900, the company gained a dominant position in the publishing of postcards. The company was, like Stender and Alstrup, nationwide in topographical terms but also published a plethora of Christmas, New Year, Easter and Pentecost cards and humour and thematic cards. In January 1907 the business was convicted for counterfeiting – having made money cards (cards sold as New Year cards) and fined 100 Crowns.

Virol Limited

The Home of Virol

Virol was a by-product of the brewing industry packed full of nutrients, malt, sugar and vitamins such as riboflavin. With its concentrated nutritious content, Virol was heavily marketed for anaemic girls, growing boys, and delicate children.

In 1899 Virol was produced experimentally by Bovril, in their Old Street factory in London. Demand grew and Bovril set up a separate company.

It became evident some time ago that, owing to Bovril expansion and the success of Virol, it would be impossible to continue to manufacture both preparations in their Old Street factories, and the question arose whether another factory should be built elsewhere by Virol, Ltd. The board of Bovril decided on the latter course, and a very fine Virol and Virolax factory has been erected at Hanger Lane, near Park Royal. It is fortunate this new factory was completed in time to take over the manufacture of Virol on January 1, as every inch of our Old Street factories is now wanted to maintain the Bovril output at the required level.
THE INDIAN MEDICAL GAZETTE. May, 1922.

Vivat, Amsterdam

Vivat, Amsterdam
“Vivat” Amst.

Vivat, Amsterdam was a book publisher between 1891 and 1911. The owners were the brothers H.H. and A. Klene who also published in their own name. Between 1899 and 1908 the firm published Vivat’s Illustrated Encyclopaedia in eleven volumes. A volume published in 1906 was the first to note the history of poetry in the gypsy community^²⁷. Vivat published postcards between 1901 and 1903^²⁸.

Friedrich Voege

Luzern, Switzerland

F. Voege, Luzern

Friedrich Voege, Luzern (trading 1898 to 1906) published topographical cards from Luzern and maps from Montreux. In the former case, he traded as Postkarten Centrale in Luzern (Passage). This is one of a number of Postcard Centres in German-speaking Europe but there is nothing to suggest that they were connected.

In 1904 in the US^²⁹ and 1905 in Switzerland, Voege lodged a patent for a case with retractable insert^³⁰. Voege developed his own, patented format with numbered grid squares and blocks for his Berlin maps^³¹.

F. Voege Jun published divided-back cards from Hannover-Berlin one of which included a map on the Voege system and a card of a humorous composition 10 Männertugenden^³²by Friedrich Voege. He also wrote Laß dich nicht unterkriegen^³³. The Dictionary of Jews in Belgium kept by the Jewish Genealogy Association has an entry for Frédéric Voege who was was born at Lucerne. He was in Brussels in 1910 and was married to Emilie Adler.

Charles Voisey, London

Charles Voisey, London Heliotypie Le Deley, Paris.

Charles Voisey, postcard publisher, London. Voisey’s big break seems to have been the opportunity to sell the work of Paris printer and publisher Le Deley (qv) to the British Market in 1902. His premises at 88 to 90 Tabernacle Street, London, EC were advertised as a branch of Le Deley and Voisey as the representative. The same advertisement also featured the Le Deley invention Le Merveilleux, a patent postcard stereoscope.

Many of the Le Deley cards featured female stars of the stage. Voisey also published on his own account, comic cards and the work of photographers Hutchinson & Svendsen. His topographical postcards from the divided-back era feature photographs of places as diverse as Japan, China and East Lothian.

The 1903 sets Lost in Blunderland and Clara in Blunderland were political parodies of Lewis Carroll’s books and presumably feature the illustrations of J Stafford Ransome from the books written by Caroline Lewis. Also striking are artist EKW’s illustrations of dogs published by Voisey.

Not to be confused with: Sir Charles Voisey, former leader of the autocratic and secretive Inner Circle, a character in Anne Perry’s historical novels.

Source: Picture Postcards and their Publishers Anthony Byatt 1978 Golden Age Postcard Books page 323

Themistocles von Eckenbrecher

T v Eckenbrecher

Karl Paul Themistocles von Eckenbrecher (17 November 1842 to 4 December 1921) was a German landscape and marine painter. His father came from a family of Prussian officers, who later in life studied medicine and was active for quite some time in the Orient. His mother, an Italian, was the daughter of a distinguished merchant from Trieste. Themistocles was born in Athens, where his parents had stopped off. In 1843 the family returned temporarily to Berlin. There, the young Themistocles attended the Anglo-American school. If he accompanied his father on his travels, he was educated by private tutors. This inspired an interest in sailing ships, which was later a recurrent motif in his work. From 1850 to 1857 the family lived in Constantinople. Then they moved to Potsdam, where they lived until 1861. His parents supported his wish to become an artist and he was tutored at a high level. He travelled throughout Europe, especially Norway and the Middle East in search of inspiration. After travelling to Egypt in the winter of 1881, Eckenbrecher and his colleague Wilhelm Simmler created the Orient panorama Mecca Caravan in Cairo (118 × 15 meters) for the city of Hamburg in 1882. In 1892 he made a trip to the colonies and travelled Africa and the Philippines. As well as Latin and Greek, Eckenbrecher spoke nine languages. In 1889 Eckenbrecher settled in Berlin^³⁴. Eckenbrecher painted for postcards issued by shipping companies and the publishers Deutsches Kolonialhaus and Pascalis Moss in London (qv). His paintings of Cornwall for their English Coasts series are of world class.

Edmund von König

Heidelberg, Germany

KÖNIGS KÜNSTLERKARTE VERLAG EDM VON KÖNIG, HEIDELBERG
Verlag Edm. Von Konig, Heidelberg
Verlag v. Edm. von Konig, Heidelberg.
Verlag von Edm. von Konig, Heidelberg.

Edmund von König, Heidelberg, a fine art publisher of prints and books and a porcelain retailer. He produced many postcards of local views and as far away as Koln. These range from early chromolithographs to hand-coloured real-photo cards by the 1950’s^³⁵. The moon is differently placed in two otherwise identical cards of mine. He also published books about Heidelberg and issued souvenir beer steins. He published cards of the works of German romantic artists Theodor Verhas (1811 to 1872) and Cecilia Pfaff (qv). In May 1898 the young Heidelberg professor of systematic theology Ernst Troeltsch corresponded on whether a housekeeper should accept a post with von König. He reported only that von König had a large art and craft business and that he knew nothing adverse to him^³⁶. In 1916 the business was occupying premises at 124 Hauptstraße^³⁷, 2 Grabengasse and 50 Neue Schloßstraße^³⁸. From June 1946 their shop at 124 Main Street was given over to a US Information Center. Kunstverlag Edmund von König GmbH of 48 Schillerstr, 69234 Dielheim were acquired by the Schöning publishing house in 2004. In 1922 they published Griechische Vasenbilder by Ernst Langlotz which was hailed in The Journal of Hellenic Studies as the book we have been wanting. They published postcards and other tourist materials throughout the 20^th century.

J. von Matt, Altdorf, Uri, Switzerland

Verlagsanstalt^³⁹ J. von Matt, Altdorf.

Jakob von Matt (26 August 1848 to 1918). Von Matt was the founder of a dynasty of photographers^⁴⁰. He had a stationery and bookbinding shop on Schmiedgasse in Altdorf between 1893 and 1913.

Vouga & Company

Geneva, Switzerland

VOUGA & CIE GENEVE

Vouga & Company, art publishers, Geneva published postcards of artist-drawn topographicals of Switzerland. Maurice Reymond printed a series of cards of artwork by JJ Redmond for Vouga. In the divided-back era they published cards of the work of the Swiss artist Charles Meltzer (1856 to 1922). In the 1920s they published cards of the floral paintings of Swiss artist Anna Haller (1872 to 1924).

Vouga also published chromolithographs of works of Swiss 19th century floral artist Emilie Vouga who was presumably a relative of the publishers. The works from the E. Vouga Collection were printed by Frey & Company of Zurich.

In about 1912 Vouga published larger chromolithographs of the work of Italian painter Carlo Pellegrini (1866 to 1937).

By the 1940s they had merged with Wehrli and were publishing B&W topographical photo-cards under the name Wehrli & Vouga.

This interesting postmark indicates that the card was received in the Bern Briefexpedition (sorting/despatch) office and advertises the Swiss National Exhibition in Bern 1914.

1Selling Luxury: The Rise of the Egyptian Cigarette and the Transformation of the Egyptian Tobacco Market, 1850-1914 Relli Shechter International Journal of Middle East Studies Vol. 35, No. 1 (Feb., 2003), pp. 51-75 (25 pages) Published by: Cambridge University Press

2Pictures in the Post Richard Carline (1959 Gordon Fraser) p 19

3 http://www.nls.uk/collections/rare-books/collections/postcards

4Picture Postcard Annual 2020

5 Evening Illustrated

6 https://lib.ugent.be/viewer/archive.ugent.be%3AA281F734-FAE9-11E7-83CA-677A0AD9BE4D#?c=0&m=0&s=0&cv=0&r=0&xywh=-914%2C-122%2C5170%2C2424

7 General distribution:

8 https://www.notepad-factory.com/geschiedenis/

9 https://www.geni.com/people/Theodore-Van-den-Heuvel/6000000000228361355

Not to be confused with Belgian doctor Théodore Van den Heuvel (1846 to 1902).

10 https://kortrijkpostkaarten.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/van-den-heuvel-de-uitgever.html

11 https://www.prentbriefkaarten.info/hermann-van-der-moolen.html

12 http://www.archive.nrw.de/LAV_NRW/jsp/findbuch.jsp?archivNr=78&tektId=28&id=015&klassId=3