The Blue Girl in the Yellow Hat

Strikingly tinted blue-toned postcards.  This series appears to have been quite popular-- I have seen more examples from it than any other!

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This one, interestingly, has a different publisher's mark than the other two-- Bleuet instead of A Noyer. 

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Black and Gold II

More examples of the trend to frame a tinted image in black stencilled with gold. 

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The effect seems to have been achieved by prolonging the light exposure of the non-image parts of the print. This hyperexposure results in a very high density of silver in the black regions. Denser regions of photographic prints are more prone to the type of deterioration known as silver mirroring, resulting in the blue-silver appearance in the black regions of most of these types of card. When they were first made, the black would have been solid and matte. 

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This card was sent for New Year's 1942, probably almost a decade after it was made. 

History: The Early 1920s

All right, back to the history! So, as we saw, there were precedents to these 1920s cards in the preceding decades-- lovely women and loving couples carefully posed, hand-tinted or dyed with bright colours. However, there is still significant visual difference between this, from 1915:

and this, from 1924:

How did they go from one to the other? 

So far my answer, I'll admit, is incomplete. World War One definitely accelerated changes in society, as we can see in some of the poses on postcards, and the differences between 1914 and 1924 certainly go far beyond postcards. I suspect the taste for bright colours we see in the 1920s and early 1930s cards was affected by other cultural factors; indeed I've read that the 20s saw something of a "craze for colour." 

I do, however, have some visuals to fill in the gap. These postcards were sent between 1920 and 1923 by a fellow called Victor to his girlfriend Pauline. Though they were sent in Luxembourg, they are made in France. I find them interesting because the images are still very similar to those of the 1900s and 1910s, but the colouring is more in line with what we see in the 1920s-- the brightness and the airbrushed spots of colour. My sample size is small and based on the taste of one couple, but still it is interesting to see the progression. 

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This card bears the mark of publishing house PC Paris, the most prominent publisher of these cards through the 1920s and 1930s. The numbers they assign to cards appear to be at least roughly in chronological order; 60 is the lowest I've seen (and the date of this card--1920--is also the earliest I've seen for a PC Paris card). 

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By 1922, Victor was sending cards with that familiar 1920s look:

Beneath a Golden Sky

One more digression before getting back into the history: this stunning pair of "sister" cards painted over with a Japanese-inspired background and gold-coloured paint. Like many "sisters" from the same photoshoot, the tinting style is the same between them but there is a colour variation. So far I've only seen a few examples of this kind of card, where a background or shapes are painted onto the card after printing (always including gold-colouring), but they're pretty great. 

The message on this one is sweet-- it is a brother and sister wishing their brother happy birthday. 

Art Deco Beauty

A couple more posts on the history of these cards are upcoming, but I'm so enamoured of a recent couple acquisitions I just had to interrupt.

Three sister cards, depicting a lovely young woman against a striking Art Deco background... two pink, the last an incredible, tinted, metallic that blows me away. I just love the composition, the flowers, the geometric background, the gauzy shawl around her shoulders... and, on that last one, oh, the tinting...!

(I have this one thanks to an amazing friend who gave it to me from her collection after I found the others.. aw!)

This is the same image as the first one, but printed on  metallic paper and processed with a pink-orange dye, then hand-tinted with an exceptional amount of colour and care. 

I just adore the writing on the front, too. This is one of my current favourite favourites. 

This is dated 1937, but I strongly suspect it was made around 1932. The publishing house PC Paris seems to date their cards in the order of creation, and I have others around and after this number from 1932 and 1933. A store or individual probably had it around in the interim.

History: World War One

While the colours of hand-tinted postcards experienced little change through the 1910s, the First World War certainly had an impact on the visuals of romance postcards. The pressure of war added an urgency to love. More couples were separated, with less certainty about their future. Postcards were sent back and forth between soldiers and their sweethearts (you can see a great set here, with a happy ending). In this context, the depiction of couples shifted. The chaste gazes began to give way to touching and kissing. While 'dirty' postcards always co-existed with this more romantic, hand-tinted meant-for-sending type, the lines began to blur more and more. It is not uncommon to see postcards of this type depicting women in lingerie (though of course, lingerie at this time was much less revealing than it would become) or indeed, couples lying in bed together (unfortunately this post includes no examples--still on my 'to acquire' list! However, examples can be see here, here, here, and here).

The kind of postcard pose we see in the pre-WWI postcards, with the gentleman changed to a soldier (these did remain common): 

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(I'm not sure why the address and message side are reversed on this... quite odd). 

Another fairly chaste pose... with the prominent addition of a bed in the background. 

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1917. 

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The kind of passionate embrace rarely seen before WWI:

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1917. 

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A woman flat-out sitting in a man's lap: 

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1917. 

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The kiss, staple of the 1920s cards but almost never seen pre-WWI:

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August 1918. 

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History: Early Days

Time for a short journey into the past (well, the farther past!). The postcard this blog is all about come from the 1920s and early 1930s--but where did they come from? 

As you've already guessed, yes, they had ancestors. The hand-tinting, the romantic couples, even the bright colours and glitter-- none of it was new, though it certainly took a new direction in the early 1920s. 

Of course, determining where exactly something starts is always difficult. From the 1890s to the mid-1910s all kinds of postcards were wildly popular, with millions sent every year. I will admit my research has not yet been exhaustive, but hand-tinted, real photo postcards featuring beautiful women (clothed!) seem to have begun to be popular in the first couple years of the 1900s. At this point many of them are already famous as actors, singers, or dancers, but anonymous women are also featured. 

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Postmarked 1904, before the introduction of the split-back postcard. 

This postcard, sent 1904, is not a real photo postcard, but features hand-tinting and a lot of glitter:

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By the mid 1900s, if not earlier, we see models posing as couples in commercially produced hand-tinted photo postcards:

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No date, but early 1900s-- I don't know exactly when the split-back postcard was introduced in France, but it was 1907 in the United States and from the dated postcards I have it seems to have been about the same time.