Famous

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt for Famous People

'Magic of the Movies Series'

"They had a date with fate in Casablanca". I've lost count of how many times I have watched Casablanca. Most of the witty and often quoted dialogue was actually written day to day with none of the actors knowing until the final day of shooting how it was  going to end. The film was premiered in NY November 1942 (just after the Allies landed in North Africa ) with theatrical releases in January 1943. (Behind the Fog 10 surprising film facts)

A young Charles Dickens painted by his lifelong friend Daniel Maclise in 1839 when Dickens would have been 27. Pickwick Papers had been published in 1836 and in 1839 he had two monthly serializations running concurrently of Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. Many of Maclise's paintings were based on literary sources both ancient and modern. He also worked as an illustrator for Frasers Magazine and illustrated works by Dickens and Tennyson among others. The two friends would both die in the same year (1870), Dickens worn out with work and travel at 57 and Maclise of acute pneumonia. Maclise was born in Ireland (Cork) so lets visit his homeland with a royal couple 

'Queen Elizabeth II ad Prince Philip on their historic State Visit to the Republic of Ireland 2011'

being shown the art of pouring a perfect pint of Guinness although both declined the opportunity to drink it, there may have been some Irish banter at this point.

Peril

 See It on A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt - Legends and Children's Stories

I imagine there are lots of legends abut the sea in Brittany. This one features L'Ankou de la Mer. The card shows the stretch of sea between Pointe du Raz and Isle de Sein which has always been a place of danger for sailors. If a boat in these parts encountered 'Bag Noz' (boat of the night) it was sign of imminent death. The first drowned person of the year became Ankou of the Sea, and took the place of the captain of the sinister boat. The Bag Noz could appear at any moment but disappeared as soon as anyone tried to approach it. It was especially important not to try to follow it because it led directly to the reefs, which are numerous.

This is a Winnie the Pooh story of when Seven Acres Wood flooded. Pooh bear took his honey up to a branch of a tree and stayed there until on the fourth day there was nothing left. The chapter is called  'In Which Piglet is Entirely  Surrounded by Water'. Pooh spots Piglets message in a bottle asking for help, it looks like a honey jar so that gets Pooh bear down from the tree.

Rescuing Tigger from a pine tree using Christopher Robin's tunic from the chapter of The House At Pooh Corner In Which It is shown that Tigger's Don't Climb Trees

Animals Illustrated

See It On A Postcard's  Thursday Postcard Hunt - Illustrated Animals

One of Dick Bruna's alphabet cards and of course M is for Miffy

Frog by Matsumoto Hoji

Matsumoto Hoji was active in the late 18th Century. Little is known about him but must have been well known in the past as his frogs appeared in the 'Meika Gafu', a compendium of famous artworks and artists published in 1814.

Illustration - Jackie Morris from The Lost Words book

A frog almost hidden by a Lady Fern on what looks like a misty morning by the pond. From frog

to a dog in summertime. 

Map the World

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt on this month's theme - Illustrations;  Week 1 - Maps

Moominland Midwinter

Sensibly the Moomins sleep through the winter but one year Moomintroll wakes up and cannot get back to sleep, goes outside, and does not recognise this world of white which seems empty and feels lonely and frightening, but it is not long before someone appears. The Moominland Midwinter book, was published in 1957 with map and illustrations. Tove Jansen dedicated it to her mother. The perfect book for the winter season.

Welcome to Andalusia

Time to head for the sun and sea of Spain for a map one could use for exploring the real world.

Xmas in July

 

1981: Europa - Folklore (Design - Fritz Wegner)

Mummers' plays were performed seasonally usually at Christmas, Easter or Plough Monday and could be described as early pantomime with rhyming couplets. A popular play in England would be George and the Dragon with a twist that George is also eventually killed by a knight called Slasher but George is brought back to life by The Doctor and his magic potion. The plays are stories of birth and re-birth, good over evil enacted by masked or disguised actors. Modern mummers don't often wear elaborate masks.  I imagine the mummers glory years were the Middle Ages.

1993: 150th Anniversary of A Christmas Carol (Design - Quentin Blake)

Whatever the time of year everyone needs a jovial Mr and Mrs Fezzywig who Dickens portrays as symbols of joy and community, kindness and generosity and not only for Christmas. What else is not only for Christmas?  Well there is

2004: Christmas (Illustrator - Bjorn Berg)

receiving and sending mail and

2024: Christmas (Artist - Judy Joel)

churches, or this case cathedrals. Not forgetting the well known plea that when buying puppies as presents

 

1991: Dogs - Paintings by George Stubbs

"Dogs are not only for Christmas'. 

Sunday Stamps theme - Christmas in July - See It On A Postcard 

Millennium Blue

1999: Millennium - The Traveller's Tale (Design - George Hardie)

 Into the blue with Millennium stamps - Jetting around the world

2000: Millennium - Water and Coast

Take the maritime route at Portsmouth Harbour

2000: Millennium - People and Place

Cross over the Gateshead Millennium Bridge spanning the River Tyne

2000: Millennium - Art and Crafts

Visit Tate Modern, 20th Century art and beyond, housed in what was the Bankside Power Station

1999: Millennium - The Patient's Tale (Design - Susan Macfarlane)

Sometimes unexpected things happen, lets hope it does not involve nurses and stretchers.

2002: Peter Pan (Illustrator - Colin Shearing)

or pirates.

Sunday Stamps theme - Blue - See It On A Postcard 

Imaginative Women

 

1980:Europa - Victorian Novelists (Design - Barbara Brown)

The 1980 Europa theme was famous people and GB featured two Bronte sisters. Charlotte gets the CEPT logo and the  12p first class letter rate

Emily gets the versatile 15p for heaver letters both first and second class.  I don't have the other two writers featured on the set who were George Elliot (Mill on the Floss) and Elisabeth Gaskell (North and South).

2011: Magical Realms

The versatile Tilda Swinton,as the White Witch/Queen in the film 'Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. If you want other worldly she's your woman.   From flights of the imagination to

2003: Extreme Endeavors (Design - H Brown)

a record breaking aviator, the FDC shows  Amy Johnson's solo flight from London to Darwin, Australia in 1930. She  hoped to set  a record flight time but missed it by three days however her adventure propelled her into the press and public's imagination. She went on to set records for Siberia to Tokyo and London to Cape Town. In 1940 she joined the RAF Air Transport Auxiliary but while on a mission disappeared over the Thames Estuary in January1941. The cancel is from her home town of Kingston Upon Hull. Her flights however were from, at the time, the only international airport in the country Croydon Aerodrome (a large part of aviation history). Croydon's Aerodrome Hotel celebrated their 75th Anniversary with this FDC.

The hotel makes an appearance on the reverse of the envelope as it would have looked in the 1930s.

Sunday Stamps theme - Famous Women - join one at See It On A Postcard

Pictorial Maps

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt is in search of pictorial maps

A postcard map for a literary pilgrimage to Bronte Country

and to find your way a larger map may be needed although the Pennine Way, on the spine of England, bypasses the sisters home, Haworth Parsonage so no tea shop stop there if walking the route.

Alternatively relax into a scenic railway journey through Yorkshire. The 19th Century Ribblehead Viaduct at the bottom is the most impressive of them all on the Settle to Carlisle Line and beloved by photographers, especially if there is a steam train crossing.

Perhaps as it is winter take a city break in Antwerp, the railway station will impress and a cornucopia of postcards are for sale at the Plantin-Moretus printing museum.

Blue Yonder

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt is looking at the colour Blue

A quiet day fishing in Moomin Valley

Lake Keitele by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1905)

They might get lost in the huge expanse of Lake Keitele in central Finland. Gallen-Kallela painted the lake many times between 1904 and 1906. This is his third painting and is the only painting of his work in a British public collection. Some years ago the British National Gallery put on an exhibition of his works and brought together all four versions. This is considered his most elaborate, showing the lake under summer light.  I must admit the cool blue reminded me of icy waters but then in my experience lake water is rarely, if ever, warm. A beautiful lake to gaze across whatever the season.

La Grande Famille by Rene Magritte (1963)

A seascape from Rene Magritte of both tranquility and foreboding

Polynesia, The Sky by Henri Matisse (1946)

Time to relax on a Polynesian island under a blue sky.

Bridges of Dreams

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt in search of wooden bridges

Moomin Bridge over the creek leading to Moomin House.  Snufkin returns to Moominvalley every spring to spend time with his good friend Moomintroll and of course have adventures

and I am sure they would take a wooden ladder bridge over a crevasse with equanimity.

This Mont Blanc card was sent in 1911 from Gabrielle to her friend Jeanne..

Memorialised

 See It On A Postcard's Thursday Postcard Hunt is in search of statues and memorials

Plaza de Espania

and in Spain with their heads in the clouds Don Quixote and the Sancho Panza ride out from the pages of Cervantes,  forever in the search of adventure.

Glentrool Forest Park

The clouds of  an ancient conflict settle over the Bruce Stone in remembrance of Robert the Bruce who defeated English forces in Glen Trool (1307).  A monument to look at and read before starting the popular walk up the boggy narrow valley to ascend The Merrick, southern Scotland's highest peak. A panorama of the Galloway Forest, Ireland and the Isle of Man is promised on reaching the top. It all depends on the weather. Many years ago we viewed and read the granite stone in sunshine however on reaching the top the clouds and mist had descended.

In Sri Lanka the seated Buddha of Gal Vihara teaches the lesson that all is impermanence and transitory. This is one of four images carved on a single large granite rock face in the ancient city of Polonnaruwa.. It is thought that they were once coated in gold.  Time for contemplation over a nice cup of  Ceylon tea.

Women in Action

 

1999: Millennium - The Travellers Tale (Design - George Hardie)

The title of the stamp is "Liberated by Bike"

2000: Nobel Laureates - Literature (Design/Engaving - Lars Sjooblom)

and perhaps one of these Nobel prize winners was liberated by words.  Nelly Sachs (1891-1970), who was Jewish, fled to Sweden in 1940 on the last flight from Nazi Germany to Sweden. Being on board that flight was the coincidence of knowing Selma Lagerlof (the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in literature) because of a long correspondence with her.  The help of Lagerlof , who enlisted the Swedish royal family to her cause, got her on the plane.  The other prize winner is Wislawa Szumorska (1923-2012), Polish poet, essayist and translator. She was once asked why she had not published more poems and replied because she had a trash can at home. In our present troubled times her poem mentioned by the poetry foundation starts with the words "After every war/someone's got to tidy up"

1996: Europa - Famous Women

The artist Paula Modersohn-Becker (1876-1907) is known for her fight against the restrictions for women artist and her self portraits. She had a prolific output of paintings and drawings but sadly she died at only 31 due to complications after child birth.

Sunday Stamps theme of - Women - See It On A Postcard

Great Lives

 Thursday Postcard Hunt is on Inspirational Thoughts and I start with a writer

"Don't Be afraid of BIG ideas!"

who had lots of radical Big Ideas but then Mary Shelley was the daughter of  Mary Wollstonecraft and Stanley Godwin who also had lots of big ideas.

"Stand up for what you believe"

An  activist who believed in deeds not words - Rosa Parks was not going to give up her seat on the bus.  This led to the 382 day Montgomery Bus Boycott and eventually down the road a Supreme Court decision that bus segregation was unconstitutional. 

There is no mention on the cards to the illustrator however I think it may be the Ukrainian children's book illustrator Yulia Zolotova as my Google search turned up a series of books by Mary Nhin called 'Mini movers and shakers' which has an illustration of a similar style.  I like to think the book cover of Rosa Parks was the 'before' and this postcard the 'after'.

Omar Khayyam

1967: Omar Khayyam - Poet and Philosopher

Arab and Persian miniatures and woodcuts illustrating the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 

As can be seen the sheet is incomplete, missing tabs and selvedges. In the English speaking world the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam is most familiar (and quotable) in the translation by Edward Fitzgerald first published in 1859.  Dubai issued the sheetlets in four languages, English, Arabic, French and German.

The missing quatrains tabs on the top include the two that are most often quoted - Left to Right: -

The moving finger writes, and having writ,/Moves on: not all thy Piety and Wit/Shall lure it back to cancel half a line/Not all they Tears wash out a Word of it

Here with a little Bread beneath the Bough,/ A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse - and Thou/ Beside me singing in the Wilderness -/Oh Wilderness were Paradise enow!

So while the Vessels one by one were speaking,/One spied the little Crescent all were seeking;/And then they jogg'd each other, "Brother! Brother!/Hark to the Porter's Shoulder-knot a creaking!"

Sunday Stamps theme this week is - Poets and Writers - read more at See It On A Postcard

Films and Books

 Thursday Postcard Hunt  this week: Words - Book Covers  and Movie Posters - be careful out there...

Frozen (2005) was filmed locally to me by the shifting sands of Morecambe Bay and won a number of awards. The story is of Kath's older sister who mysteriously disappeared two years ago but who she starts to see. Is it a ghost story or murder mystery? Has  Kath found access to the afterlife or losing her grip on reality?  You never know.

Illustrator Norma Barr

Boo!  You may need something stronger than Chianti to "See Film Differently", Volkswagen's campaign and support for independent cinema.  I was very excited some years ago when I spotted their postcards at my local independent cinema  The posters were displayed throughout the UK

Postcards were also found at my local multiplex this time of Young Adult novels being publicised by Walker Books. The quote on the reverse says "Demons are dangerous, but love is deadly...".  This was the first of Cassandra Clare's Infernal Devices series described as urban fantasy, looks like we are in London.

The other one I found was for 'Scorpia Rising' the sixth in the Alex Rider teenage spy novels by Anthony Horowicz.  I can never resist free postcards.