Greeting Cards and Postcards

How do we represent ourselves when we send greetings to friends far away? In the digital age, the options are bewildering. In the pre-digital age, we were at the mercy of local photographers of varying levels of skill.

A survey of postcards and greeting cards from the 19th century is nothing if not instructive. From businesses and government bodies sending their regards to clients at Christmas to commercially-available postcards, we made some interesting image choices..

Greetings from unlikely sources.

The Optician, and every head he’s had the pleasure to know.

In 1893, Greenfield & Barraclough greeted its clients with a dazzling photographic collection of the eminent peepers they’d tended to. The nature of photographic portraiture of the time made most of the faces peer out of the photographs in an almost unnerving way. I think I prefer the pestilential emails from OPSM.

A greeting from your friendly neighbourhood Police Commissioner.

The colonies had become a nation, and Commissioner William Edward Parry-Okeden sent out his greetings and those of his force with an elaborate printed card. There were officers gathered about the entrance to headquarters – mounted police with sabres, helmeted police in boots and jodhpurs, flag-holding police, and even (one) bicycle police officer. How modern we were!

On the inside, the card contained a poem, to which one F. C. Urquhart, Inspector, affixed his name. As a poet, he made a rather good Police Inspector.

Well, that was nice of the Postmaster General of Great Britain and Ireland, wasn’t it?

G Black, who sold books and newspapers to the people of Toowoomba, sent this out in 1898. Time hasn’t been kind to the image, but it would have been a fairly impressive undertaking for a business in a regional city at that time.

Decades before your tiresome relatives sent you Christmas newsletters and social media posts about their fabulous lives, the folk at Mt Abundance Station decided to unleash this on their friends and families. This was 1898, and the photographer managed to make Mt Abundance look as ramshackle, dusty and dry was possible. I’m sure the folks at Home were impressed. Not.

Nothing says Seasons Greetings like a distant shot of a temporary camp at Mt Morgan (1892).

The *Queenslander* made a charming illustration for their Christmas 1897 edition.

And this is sweet. A decent photograph, and trimmed in leaves.

The Lundager Postcards

The Lundager studios were active in the Rockhampton and Mount Morgan regions in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The images they chose for their postcards show Rockhampton as a tropical city with some stunning buildings, courtesy of that gold rush money.

Brisbane in the 1890s

Albert Fullwood took the images of Brisbane in 1895, which were the basis of postcards coloured by the “oilette” tecnhnique. These renderings kept the sharp edges of a photograph, but laid on a wash of colour and detail to the images. Idealised, yes, but an arresting view of a subtropical city at the end of the 19th century.