What did we ever do without Photoshop?  This postcard from the Netherlands features photographic art — an homage to Boticelli’s The Birth of Venus — by Peter Gramberg, but is actually an advertising postcard for the weekly magazine HP / De Tijd.  Unlike many postcard collectors, I don’t generally mind advertising postcards (especially with themes like this one).  After all, the ad cards of today are the vintage ad cards of tomorrow.  Hey, in fifty years you might get ten bucks for this on eBay!

Here is the part where I was going to write about what was the De Tijd (“Time”) Catholic daily newspaper, how their readership declined following the end of pillarization in the Netherlands, how they merged with another pillarized publication and became a weekly magazine — but it’s late and I’m tired.  You will have to illuminate yourself today.

According to the back of this Postcrossing card from Taru, “the bath whisk of birch twigs must be soft and warm.”  See, honey?  This postcard is educational!  Actually, the missus had a few comments on this young lady’s physique, but she has nothing to worry about.

The description is also published in Finnish — “Saunavihdan haudutus” — which, as I recall, is the spell that Harry and Ron tried to use in Book 5 to lure Hermione into the steam room at Hogwarts.

Two days ago, I posted some cards featuring the Jefferson Memorial, and a new Jefferson Memorial postcard arrived in the mail later that day.

Yesterday, I posted an advertising card for women’s clothing from the former Eastern Bloc, and a new advertising postcard for women’s clothing arrived from the former Eastern Bloc later that day.

Today I am posting this card from Kris.

I am too terrified to walk out to the mailbox.

This is not a postcard, but rather an arcade card, which were sold in vending machines at places like fairgrounds and carnivals.  Often they were the prize in some mechanized test of strength or skill.  The cards are about as heavy as pasteboard, and are blank on the back.

Arcade cards from later eras featured everything from pin-up girls to movie stars to stills from TV episodes.  Earlier cards from the 1920s and 1930s, however, generally featured comic (and usually slightly risque) sayings and drawings.

This week’s foray into Postcard Friendship Friday brings us to this gift from my postcard friend Eddy, who runs the excellent blog D’hier à aujourd’hui (From Yesterday to Today), which compares postcard images of the France of yesteryear with modern views of the same sites. This card, along with another turn-of-the-century French card, arrived a few days ago, but you get to see only this one today; I will save the other for Bastille Day.

This postcard, postmarked 24 August 1905, shows the top of the Fontaine Carpeaux in Paris’s 6th District.  The four maidens, created by sculptor Jean Baptiste Carpeaux, represent the “four parts of the world”: an African; an American Indian; an Asian; and a Caucasian.  They are posed as if they are turning the celestial sphere, complete with the signs of the zodiac, around the Earth.  Interestingly, the sphere was not created by Carpeaux, but by another sculptor, Pierre Legrain.  The fountain’s pool, not pictured, contains sculptures of horses emerging from the water, which were created by yet another sculptor, Emmanuel Frémiet.  But it is only Carpeaux’s name on the fountain.

The back of this card is even more fascinating:

The card is addressed to Monsieur et Madame Poulain (ancestors of Amelie, perhaps?) at 6 Rue de la Présentation in Paris, which is looking a little worse for wear today.  The message is in an antique hand, and seems to be misspelled and ungrammatical here and there in a language that I don’t speak well, but I believe that it reads something like the following (please feel free to correct me):

All my regrets at not being here yesterday to thank you for your strong support. I charge this card with the deed and will meet both of you for dinner tomorrow night Friday without fail.  I embrace you (both). Yvette.

I guess the modern equivalent is receiving an email that closes with the word “hugs.”  There’s also a postscript in the upper left: “Alice wants(?) me to hug you for her.”  Let us hope that Yvette kept her appointment, gave hugs all around, and didn’t have to send another apology.

“THE SENSATION OF THE YEAR. FIRST PRIZE — At Paris Salon, June 1912, for which the Artist won the medal of honor, the highest recognition which any Artist can attain in France. The picture shows a rarely beautiful blond figure posed in the waters of the sea of Brittany an an hour when it glows like a great fire opal.” I had to think about this description for a while. I don’t think the writer means that the figure is only beautiful on rare occasions; I think he means that the beauty itself is rare.

Although Chabas won the Medal of Honor in France, the painting attracted little attention. Thus, he sent it to America to attract a buyer, where it was spotted in a gallery window by Anthony Comstock, moral crusader and founder of the New York Society for the Prevention of Vice. As a result of the publicity, bright boys began reproducing the image on everything from cigar boxes to calendars to postcards — one of which you see above, contemporary to the scandal. Thanks to Comstock’s political appointment as an agent of the Postal Service, the postcard itself was prohibited in the mails; consequently, this card is unused.

This sepia-toned reproduction does not do justice to the painting. I purchased this card in an antique shop for a dollar. Below is a representation of the entire painting.