Recent Sketchbook pages (this is one of three that will feature in a new set - coming soon).
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I wrote a postcard to my love,
But someone else must have got it.
Years go by and still I dream -
Should have kept it in my pocket.
(variation on a traditional song)
I collect postcards, of all kinds but especially cards from the earlier twentieth century. But I don’t have a cut-off date and will happily collect anything that takes my interest. Alongside the old cards I also have an ever growing collection of cards from galleries and museums. I can’t visit anywhere without wanting to buy a card.
Yes, I was the child on a school trip who looked forward to visiting the gift shop and spending her fifty pence on cards more than actually visiting the museum, quite possibly. The museum would have been overwhelming, and did we ever get to see anything in detail, scurrying along bright to dark corridors, peering into glass cabinets? Worrying about getting lost, or having to eat sandwiches in a strange place. Oh, but choosing postcards and getting them in a special paper bag…. Then, back home, spending time actually looking at the pictures or artefacts…. I only wish I still had some of the cards from way back then, but I have lost many through moves and because I have had a tendency to use postcards as bookmarks and then the books get passed along…
My favourite old postcards have been found on antique stalls and in charity shops but I will confess I have spent far too much time browsing cards on ebay. It’s not just the picture or photograph that interests me. Quite often I will be captivated by the writing, a few enigmatic lines can take me to a place of wondering. ‘Don’t forget that orchid when you come this way’ the writer states in beautiful fountain pen handwriting. And I ponder this for hours. The orchid, something quite special indeed (this is the Edwardian era, they don’t have orchids on supermarket shelves), but I wonder not about the orchid but the people around it, the mood in the room where it sits, the books on the shelves, the ticking of the clock, pouring of tea and another postcard lands on the doormat: Don’t forget….
All these things inspire. I go back to a time I never knew but feel at home in and it is there I feel I can draw, sketch and consider. The familiarity of tone, the hurried script on the back of a postcard, invites me into a time of gently paced conversation. One day I was browsing through many stalls at a collector’s fair when I came across a postcard - a dark landscape - and on the reverse an address but no stamp and the words: You need eyes in the back of your head.
What does that suggest to you? I read the card and swivelled about me, as if being watched. Yes, of course you need eyes in the back of your head if you are a spy, or someone plotting something secretive, or why else?
I wondered and wandered about the place, looking at other things and finally decided I could not go back to the stall and purchase that card. It would be too powerful a thing to possess. It would worry me in my sleep. But I still think about it. If you ever need a prompt for short story writing, or indeed drawing or any such: find a box of old postcards in your local charity shop / thrift store.
This month I am exploring the postcard as a format, a small space for making art but also as an object to be transformed. I enjoy using and reconsidering postcards, but I do this very carefully. A great deal of time goes into considering whether I should cut or re-use a card at all. How precious is it, to me, to the world of communication? I will classify old cards into those I must preserve, those I can draw on but not cut up and those it will be ok to cut into. I go by gut, rather than postmark date, or picture quality, I have used ephemera in my work - from old book pages to button cards - for many years. Indeed, I think it was the joy of bringing the old into the present that inspired me to begin.
Recent sketchbook pages that make use of a fragment of a postcard (bottom left)
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The ‘orchid postcard’ became a starting point for this new poem:
Orchid
We had stopped talking, so stared at the orchid -
the shadow of it like a child dancing
but I did not want to say this, for seeming too esoteric.
I did not wish to draw attention to it,
the orchid, a gift from someone else.
Then my father came in and tore back the curtain -
asked why we were sitting in the dark together.
And I saw your cheeks flush in sepia
and the clock ticked loudly.
The cat came in from the garden
covered in wet rose petals.
Father stood grimly by, filling his pipe.
You said: must catch the post, so I’ll be off.
We did not say goodbye.
And I sat still and listened to you wheeling your bicycle
All the way along the grim path.
And that was that.
(- one of a small collection that will feature in a new mini zine coming soon.)
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Brown paper sketchbook pages from 2014.
Ahh, I think mothers and teachers need eyes in the back of their heads! But isn’t that another form of intuition, something akin to ‘it’s too quiet in there… what are they up to?’! I, too, love to collect postcards, primarily from museums and galleries. The cards available from the Bouquinistes along the Seine in Paris have some fascinating oddities, although some of them can be quite risqué. Sometimes I want cards to document what I have seen but couldn’t photograph well, and other times I want to remember the feelings evoked by the atmosphere of the image. It’s holding a snippet of life in my hands that I can return to again and again.
Thank you for this wonderful post. You are a kindred spirit in that my era of fascination is also the Edwardian period, and where I feel most at home and inspired!! xx