Your New Years Book

Happy New Year! Thanks so much for following this little blog of mine. I have really enjoyed sharing my collection on here and on Flickr and I appreciate it so much when you take a moment to comment. I am looking forward to all kinds of neat things to share in the new year.

Here are three sweet New Years wishes for you on this last day of 2009. I wish for you all that is written here. Why, hello there 2010.

This above postcard was sent to Mrs David on South Ivanhoe St in Portland. There is no street number and no stamp or postmark. The sender wrote the date at the bottom, Jan 5th 1925. She wrote:

Dear Mrs David,

May Heaven Richest Blessings be yours for the coming new year.

Lovingly,
Mrs Lucinda Jones

This one above says on the back.

To Opal
From "Buckle's"
1926

a very merry christmas to you

Christmas Eve is here. This year came so much faster it seems. I feel behind in my basic Christmas rituals. Right now I am watching White Christmas for the first time this season. That is weeks behind my usual viewing.

Ha! Well, no matter. It is here and it should be fun. My family does a theme Christmas every year. We have done Medieval Christmas, 1960's, Dutch, Hungarian and others. It makes each year unique. This year it is Depression Era Christmas. Soon, I need to go in my closet and find some outfit vaguely reminiscent of the 1930's. I am going for a Walton's version.

I found some great old music to play tonight, mostly from the 1930's. You can listen too if you want. You can find it here.

Here is the only Christmas item I could find in my collection from the 1930's. It is actually plastic and on the back is a calander for 1933:


I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas. I will leave you with this last Christmas postcard from December 24th 1917. It was from Emma and Edwin to their brother Oliver in New London, Minnesota.

Homefront Christmas

This image above is from a homemade Christmas card. It is a photograpah printed on really nice toothy thick paper. It is them folded and then folded again. When you open it it has this inside:



A funny Christmas card remarking on the weird world of rationing that people had to go through during World War II. It is one of my favorite finds.



A Christmas family portrait with the soldier brother included in the corner.

Christmas Lamps

This one above was sent to Berkeley, Ca in 1920 from one sister to another.

from Our House to Yours

Christmas is fast approaching and I am running out of time to post all the many Christmas postcards and photos I have. Oh, well, I guess that leaves more for next year. Just today I got a whole new handful at the Webfooters Postcard Club Meeting and Christmas Potluck.

So, I am going to ramp up the posting. Here are three.

This first one is of a quality I never see. It is incredibly beautifully done. Both of the circles are raised and the little circles around them are slightly raised, too. The paper feels more like a photo than a postcard. And, as you can see the pine boughs and berries are painted. These people had some serious money. It was printed in Britain and it says "Rotary Photographic Series". There is no postmark or date. On the back is written:

Wishing you a Merry Xmas and a Happy New year. From Ada to Grand Pa

This next one has a long message on the back and it fills out the whole card, so it was not mailed as a postcard. It is doesn't have a name it is addressed to it. it just says:

Thought you might like a picture of our old family home, tho you can see it anytime....It belongs to Edward and me now. Our Howell grandparents and family came there May 14 1884 so my mother had lived there 70 years lacking 2 days when she died May 12 1954. Mamma and Aunt Frank had a private school in the parlors...Hope you are well. Florence Anne coming for Christmas, then going to Sun Valley for a week.

This one has no writing on the back. The trees are slightly raised.

Warmest Wishes

I got about 6 of these jumbo matchbooks at the Webfooters Postcard Show last April. You may not be able to tell from the photos, but the matchbooks are 4.25" x 3.25". I had never seen anything like them before and all 6 that I got were in perfect condition with no matches missing.





Right now I wanted to share the Christmas ones. I will post the other ones at another time. The Santa one has the name Gil Stuempel letter pressed on the back. A quick search shows me one listing for Gilbert Stuempel. He was born in 1906 and died in 1993. He lived in Southern California.






The other matchbook was given by Edward V Bedney. I love the words on each match. A search on him finds also only one result. But, this is fascinating. The result is another collector site - The Universalist Ship Cancellation site. These people collect the cancellations of maritime letters. So close to what I do, but I know nothing about it and didn't even know a group like that existed.



Wow, this entry took a little turn in the road. Instead of just sharing these really neat jumbo matchbooks, I have to remark on how interesting it is that this man, Edward V Bedney has lived on in history due to things that most people throw away. Although he may have died before the internet was common, he is still searchable and present because of ephemeral things and people who collect and document them. The internet is so amazing. How crazy that something he presumably sent and something her received would both be found by collectors, valued and posted online.

a family christmas card

I wish there were signatures on this card. I have decided that this family is from Southern California, due to their sleeveless outfits. I am also going to guess that this is from around 1970.

My family never did the photo Christmas cards. It is kind of curious that we didn't considering my father was a photographer. It was probably too much money.

from Florence

christmas mood

I am really starting to get into the Christmas mood. I always think I won't and then I do. I am in the mood to watch Holiday Inn. It is one of my favorite Christmas movies. I love watching Fred Astaire dance drunk. Holiday Inn is an inn that only opens on Holidays. As a person who cannot pass up a theme, you can see why I would be so enamored.

Here is another favorite (really, they all are favorites, I guess) card from 1905. Published by Chas Scribner's Sons.

Christmas Wishes

I am so excited that it is Christmas and I can share all my Christmas postcards with you. Vintage Christmas cards are one of the things I gravitate toward and I have more than a few. I think I like Christmas images so much because they are always so cozy. And cozy is one of my favorite things. Also, many Holiday postcards use some of my favorite images in artwork: houses (lit from within with smoke coming from the chimney), snow covered hills, trees, pinecones and lanterns.

Vintage postcards often have the sweetest messages on them, the kind that they don't have anymore. I also have a small collection of found Christmas photos. I look forward to showing you those, too.

I have to get busy to get all this in before Christmas is over!

My first choice is this sweet and "ernest" card from the 20's. The moon is metallic gold. It is hard to see that in the scan. The choice of just the reds and the gold is so nice and that lantern just makes it perfect.

hope you enjoyed the day

I caught a cold the day before Thanksgiving, so I am a little behind. But, since it is still technically the Thanksgiving Weekend I am going to get this late post card in under the wire.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Although I had a cold I still had a great one and the food was fantastic.

Sent from Portland, Oregon
To: Mr. C H Thompson, Marquam Building" (was at 6th and Morrison, no longer there) City (meaning Portland)

November 27th, 1911

Dear Friend,
Trust you may enjoy the day
26/11

(no name)

new items in the shop

p.s. I added some new items to The Cedar Chest shop today.

Etsy Buy Handmade thecedarchest

Meet The Ferns

I am not sure what the photographer was thinking here. These portraits were taken by E D Bennett in Hillsboro, Oregon. I love the ferns, but they do look like they are consuming those poor folks. These were probably taken around the late 1890's.

autumn picnic

This postcard was written to Lee Leighton and was sent to San Jose, California on November 12, 1906. It was sent from Seaside, Oregon.

autumn celebrations

Here is a collection of family slides that I have scanned recently. All show off autumn and it's celebrations.



Above is my mother in Yosemite. We went one year in November to celebrate my parents anniversary. That year it landed on Thanksgiving and my mom made this amazing Thanksgiving dinner in the motor home. I am guessing it was about 1973. It was a nice trip but a little strained. although I couldn't have named it back then. By the next anniversary they were getting a divorce.



This is me with a new Light Brite game probably around early November 1969. I am pretty sure I got it for my birthday. My favorite part of this pic is my bedspread. I had forgotten what that looked like. Also I do look very content with my new toy.



This is my grandmother, my Dad's mother, Alta. I love this photo because she looks so happy. I also love that I can see her kitchen in the background. This is the only old slide I have found from the kitchen. I loved that old small house they had in the hills above Santa Barbara.

I remember one year when there was a lot of talking about how Grandma was going to cook the Turkey in a paper bag. I think the men thought it wouldn't work. Maybe that is why she looks so happy because it did and it was great. I think she always cooked it like that from then on.



Here is an old slide of my sister and me at a waterfall on that same Yosemite Trip. It was so pretty there at that time of year - and cold.

I am getting ready to go on a little trip myself this week, to the coast and then to the Mountains. No fancy trips on planes for me. But, really what more could you ask for - the ocean and the woods - the sunsets and the rivers, and cozy warmth inside while watching the waves and the rain fall on the gold and orange trees. Yep, looking forward to it. Hope you all have a good week.

halloween party

A few months ago I got this remarkably beautiful and well preserved booklet on Children's Holiday Parties from 1935. Every page looks like these pages. These were sold for 25 cents at the A&P and put out by the A.E. Staley Manufacturing Company, who was best known for corn starch and corn syrup at this time.

These scans are not enhanced. The colors and illustrations are so great. Maybe you will get some ideas for your own Halloween celebration this week!

fall colors

I finally got to see a lot of fall colors this weekend. It was beautiful. I thought this was a good time to post a couple of my favorite autumny postcard.

This postcard is from Europe and has no writing on it. It says it is a Photochromie on the back. Here is a bit of info I just found on that:

Photochromie (Vidal Process) A variation of the photochrom process invented in 1875 by Leon Vidal. It was a hybrid of chromolithography with elements of the photographic reproductive methods used to create woodburytypes. It produced very high quality reproductions but it was a difficult and expensive process and rarely used. Nenke & Ostermaier patented the process in Saxony and used this method to create high quality postcards. The process was later adapted to the offset press.



This mill reminds me of one in Washington that we go to most years. You can see pics of it here.


I wish these linen postcards scanned better. The colors in the linen postcards are so beautiful.

I have a fondness for canoes.



This postcard was sent in Sept 1948 from Saint Cloud Minnesota to Yakima Washington. Dorothy told Marie about the gloomy weather in the mountains and about shopping and having lunch with Elizabeth in town.

accidental ghosts

One of the kinds of photos I collect are double exposure photos. I often call them ghost photos. They are so intriguing and dramatic. They always have this otherworldly feeling and often create a depth that is only made stronger by the fact that it is accidental. This is something that won't happen anymore with people using digital cameras. Sure they can create the effect, but that is not the same as the accidental layers.
I used this imagine in one of my zines. I use a lot of my photos in my zines. I was so happy when I discovered zines and I finally had a place to "use" the photos I had been collecting. The one above I got recently and I really love it.

If you want to get some photos and antique papers for yourself, there is a show coming up Oct 17 and 18th here in Portland. There doesn't seem to be a good website for it, but here is the listing. I think you should go.

eat at moose

I have been really busy trying to get a DVD together of my father's film, Gifts of an Eagle. I have been editing photos, doing layout and have been pretty deep into that for some time.
Just wanted to pop in here for a minute and show you a slide I came across while looking through piles of old slides. This is my mom, my sister and me eating at this outdoor restaurant in the Grand Tetons in Wyoming.



This restaurant is family legend. We were out driving, this must have been around 1971, and kept seeing all these signs EAT AT MOOSE, GOOD FOOD, or something like that. They were laughably simple ads. But once we got there we decided to give it a shot. The food was amazing, cooked "chuckwagon" style, you dished out beans and mashed potatoes from big kettles and ate outside with an amazing view or you could eat in teepees.

I looked for it recently on the internet and it is still around. My sister and mom have been able to visit there since. It has been operating for 62 years!

If you are in Wyoming I recommend it.

from Pinky

Los Angeles , CA Oct 3rd 1941

Next stop L.A. Just mailed loads to the boys in Pasadena
and unloaded Mrs. Jack Benny and Mrs Joe E Brown - 2nd class -
I love you - Pinky

I wonder if they really dropped off the Mrs Jack Benny. I just had to look up Joe E Brown and apparently he was a comedian and movie star and was really quite big in the 20's and 30's. He is best known as the rich guy in "Some Like it Hot".

I am guessing Pinky is joking, but it is fun to wonder.

The Bob Shoppe

A beautiful business card from, I assume, the late 20's. Bob hair styles were first seen during WWI, but became widely popular with the younger generation by 1921.

Because there were no hair salons for women back then, the young women who wanted to chop off their locks had to invade the barbershop and some men's barbershops had long lines outside of young women waiting to get their hair bobbed. The men were not thrilled.



The image here is from this website where you find out more about the history of The Bob.

It looks like The Bob Shoppe was fulfilling a need. I am not sure, but it looks like the Ungar building is either no more or is not called that anymore. Although it could be one of these buildings. I wonder how long The Bob Shoppe was around.

To My Dear Aunt

Being a Aunt, I am very fond of pretty vintage postcards made just for Aunts. I have a few of them. This one is especially pretty and has a curious message. It has no address or stamp and is written in pencil and cursive. It looks like an adults writing.

I know you dont lik me but accept this card for good luck.


And here is another picture postcard sent to an Aunt



Best Wishes to all for a Merry Christmas 815 Grant St

Dear Aunt,

Received your letter. Was glad to hear from you. I am enjoying married life in the nicest way and getting along fine. I have a lovely man and a nice home and he is so good to me. This is our picture. Fannie

To: Mrs Susan Yoder, Middlebury, Ind RR no 1
Postmark: Springfield, Ohio Dec 23 1911

Something I like to do is look up some of the addresses on these old postcards. Many do not have full addresses, but this on does in the return address. If you want to see where Fannie and her new husband lived, click here.

some new items listed

I finally listed some new items on The Cedar Chest shop. The set of postcards below is one of the listings. I wanted to share the message on the back of the red illustrated one:

Just got home from camping. Gee I wish you could come over.I'm not going to the fair. Are you? I'm working awful hard washing dishes. We have 6 men boarding here. Come over I'll give you your pick. They are nice ones too. Hazel

To: Miss Amy Harpe, Summerville, Ore. Postmark: Cheney, Wash August 9, 1909

immortal

The Immortal Tree is still there in Eureka, California on The Avenue of the Giants.

quite a hat

We are still hoping that some day we may hear from
you again but if it can't be ta ta.
Camping at Stone's Landing by the way.
e.c.
Am I not getting to be a quite a photographer?

Postmark: July 15 1907, Puyallup, Washington
To: Mrs Tessa Watkins, Jefferson, Washington

Penciled in later: Ada, Hazel and friend

portland history

One of the things I collect, like many Portland postcard folks, is Portland memorabilia. There is quite a bit of it at the Postcard Club and I often find some great things.

Yesterday I went to the club meeting for the first time in a while and ended up with some great finds. I wrote a bit about my visit on my other blog yesterday, check it out if you want a double dose (different item is shown).

I got this small felt pennant from the 60's there for a couple of bucks.

I also got these photo cards from a Portland restaurant that no longer exists. I don't know what the official name of these items is called, but it is a cardstock cover that folds over and covers the 5x7 photo that the restaurant's photographer takes of you as you are out on the town at their dining establishment. There are no photos inside, which makes me wonder of these came from the photographer's estate, Lillian Walker. A search for the restaurant and the photographer gave me nothing.



It looks like the house bands leader bought this restaurant about a decade later and renamed it after him.



Getting all dressed to go out to dinner and having people take your photos and all that has always been something I have wished I could of experienced. It seems it was more of an event back then.

This place looks especially neat because of the way the buildings are set up. Like going to grown-up camp for the night.

The spot where this restaurant was is not too exciting. I am thinking it was in the vacant lot, although some of it could be that housing development next to it. It looks kind of like it.

I love finding this kind of stuff and researching it. Can you tell? More neat finds to come and some new stuff to add to The Cedar Chest shop once I get the time.