Yes you can sail the seven seas

Much of the US and the world has already gone back to school; those who haven’t will probably start by next Tuesday, the day after Labor Day. This young lad is no doubt posing for his back-to-school portrait. After all, he wouldn’t wear white after Labor Day, would he?

Based on the Artura photo paper stampbox on this postcard, I can definitively say that this postcard was produced between 1908 and 1924, so I split the difference and decided it was around 1915. This photo was taken at Ferguson’s Studio of Elkins, West Virginia.

Sadly, I am not able to find any historical references to the studio, save one: in 2003, an auction house (I won’t say which one) had a collection of 14 real photo postcards of the same (unknown) family, taken at Ferguson’s. They expected to fetch $300 for the lot. Ridiculous. I picked up this card as part of a lot of unrelated RPPCs, and the cost per card was far less than a dollar.

Taken at Ferguson's Studio, Elkins, WV

Be sure to check out the other little boys and girls celebrating Postcard Friendship Friday!

Boys will be boys

Camp O-AT-KA is a summer camp for boys that exists still today.  It was founded in 1906 and has been on the same site in Sebago, Maine since 1907 .  This postcard might date from as early as 1910, based on the sturdiness of the card stock that was used (and the card is still like new), but I suspect that it’s probably from the early 1920s.

The camp was founded by the Reverend Ernest Joseph Dennen, an Episcopal minister from Lynn, Massachusetts.  He had developed a program which he called “The Order of Sir Galahad”, designed to teach the boys of his parish the virtues of “helpfulness, obedience, truth, chivalry, and service.”  The camp, in turn, was a reward for the boys who had worked hard to live up to these virtues.

Today, those virtues are apparently only for rich white boys.  Your boy can enroll in the camp’s two-week “starter program” for the low, low price of only $2,850.  If I were you, I’d go for the seven-week program: a real bargain at $7,700. Sure, running a big camp is expensive but, even adjusted for inflation, I went to camps of comparable size as a boy for about a tenth of the cost — and some of the values I learned were priceless.

Eklöfin pojat Villa Sjökullan kuistilla (1890) by Albert Edelfelt

All the way from Vaasa, Finland comes today’s postcard of a painting by Albert Edelfelt (1854-1905), a founder of the Realist art movement in Finland, and one of the first Finnish artists to become internationally famous, at least in his own time.  I believe that this is my first exposure to his work; a website called Vaasa Pages features more of Edelfelt’s paintings.

Anneli writes: “I very much like the atmosphere on this picture. The boys seem to have fun!”  I agree, but I’m afraid that boys of today (my grandsons included) are too jaded by 21st century technology to take amusement from the simple pleasures pictured.  Fortunately, I am not.