Past and Present

Arnside, on the Kent Estuary

"As part of every school holiday, my family would make a trip to a village on the Cumbrian coast called Arnside.

Positioned where Morecambe Bay begins to become the River Kent, the village has two daily tides: one of water which sweeps across the sands behind a tidal bore, and a second of daytrippers which by mid-morning has filled the thirty or so car parking places on the promenade.  

I can remember being part of that second tide and how our day would always follow a set routine: arrive early to grab a slot with a bay view, take a clingfilm-wrapped picnic up Arnside Knott and then, if the sun shone, eat an ice-cream on the stone jetty. 

If all went to plan, and it typically did, we would be on our way home in time to miss Preston rush hour."

This month, I've written an article in Picture Postcard Monthly. Ahead of my book coming out in a few weeks, it's an account of how I came across the first Edwardian postcard I bought for its message.

As I've mentioned here before, I found it ten years ago in 'Past and Present', a small bric-a-brac shop in Cumbria. To some extent, I suspect,  all the other cards I've bought since have been attempts to replay, to repeat, to remember the 'hit' of finding that initial card. 

Past and Present, on the Promenade at Arnside

Looking out from Past and Present

It's not just the possibility of finding other interesting cards that has proved so alluring, however. Understanding the nature of collecting has been equally compelling. 

I admit collecting has been a refuge at times, an escape from reality. But also - indeed simultaneously - it's been a welcome spur for re-imagining, for changing the way I see the Past and Present (and Future). 

The adventure continues to connect histories, and times. And most enjoyably, it necessitates reaching out to others.

"...as well as being drawn into life in Edwardian Britain, it’s been just as fascinating being drawn into postcard collecting itself, both then and now. 

Discovering the stories of collectors and dealers who’ve helped me along the way has been wonderful...  

like Pauline Harrison who recently found a picture of her grandfather on a postcard at her local fair;

Peter Cove and his tactical brilliance in tracking down a copy of every card by artist AR Quinton;

and Mavis McHugh who once sold a card which carried a 1,000-word message. "

The final Bloomsbury Sunday

Next Sunday (24 November) London's main postcard market will be held in Bloomsbury for the last time.

Due to the rising cost of space in the city centre, the market is having to move to a venue in Clerkenwell.

If you're in London, see if you can make it on Sunday. It's at the Royal National hotel on Bedford Way, from 10.30am. If you do go, you'll discover two extraordinary cultures, both of which offer much for the soul.

First, the fair's a great way to explore the Postcard Age from before World War One, when the British alone sent close to a billion cards a year. Back then, postcards were more than just the stuff of holidays, carrying every sort of message from birthday greetings to poetry.

We might not be in the year 2900 yet, but I think the market already proves right a prediction made by journalist James Douglas in 1909:

“When archaelogists of the thirtieth century begin to excavate the ruins of London they will fasten upon the Picture Postcard as the best guide to the spirit of the Edwardian Era. 

They will collect and collate thousands of these pieces of pasteboard, and they will reconstruct our age from the strange hieroglyphs and pictures that time has spared. For the Picture Postcard is a candid revelation of our pursuits and pastimes, our customs and costumes, our morals and manners."

With hundreds of thousands of postcards in a single room, revelations are everywhere at the market.

Then there's the second culture: today's postcard community. Whenever I go to the fair, as well as buying more cards than I intended to, I invariably learn of incredible social histories from fellow collectors.

Last time,  I spoke at length to dealer Mavis McHugh from Southampton. After hearing my interest in curious postcard messages, Mavis told me about an amazing card she'd sold a few years ago. Sent in 1916, by a soldier billeted in Buxton, the card had 941 words on it. So striking was the minute handwriting, and so gripping the soldier's account of life in the Royal Engineers, Mavis said she couldn't help transcribing it.

Below is a scan of the first part of the message. Mavis needed six pieces of notepaper to copy it out in full.

eBay may well offer up objects of interest but it doesn't provide a chance to share stories like this.

By chance, before the switch to Clerkenwell was announced, I wrote an article for Picture Postcard Monthly on the market's history. It's quite a story. Hope you enjoy it, and that it encourages you to make it on Sunday if you can.

Thanks to Katja Medic for the photos above from a visit to the market earlier in the year. The black-and-white shots below are from the archive of Dave Smith, one of the 'Smith boys' who organise the fair.

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The fourth Sunday of the month

For the last seven or eight years, I’ve been a regular at the Bloomsbury postcard market in London. To get there I take the Tube, typically, as the hotel where the market is held lies round the corner from Russell Square station. Organized for the fourth Sunday of the month, little ever seems to change there.

At the front desk, the entry process is always the same: empty your pockets for the admission fee, hand it over, and receive a programme and a postcard in return. 

Inside, you’re greeted by the sight of 50 or 60 dealers: most of whom are in the same position each month. 

And then there is the smell. 

With thousands and thousands of cards on sale - even if just for a moment - you can’t help being taken over by the intense smell of postcards en masse.

Bloomsbury market in full flow at the Royal National hotel

Bloomsbury market at the Ivanhoe hotel in the late 1970s

Such aspects of the market are shared by everyone who attends. They (and others) act to create a very communal space. Yet - just as postcard collecting allows collectors to find their own specific niches -  there are also hundreds of very personal rituals alongside the common moments of the fair.

On entering I always go on a lap of the room. I scout for a place to settle, for somewhere I might find a stash of cards I’ve not come across before.

Secret postcards

The Royal College of Art's 'Secret' exhibition is back in March. To raise money for the college's bursary schemes, more than 1,000 famous and not-so-famous artists will anonymously pit their talents against the postcard's form.

At the end of the exhibition, cards will be sold off for £45 each. Post purchase buyers find out who made their cards.

Photo of the RCA Secret from 2011

Of late, I've been reading Jeremy Cooper's Artists' Postcards, an excellent compendium of how the postcard has been used by different artists since 1900. It's quite a book. And I bet more than a few RCA artists refer to it as they create their cards for 2013.

At a pace, Cooper takes you through the canon(?) of postcard art: René Magritte's postcard magazines, Gilbert & George's Post Card Sculptures, Paul Morton's Thatcher Therapy (a dot-to-dot postcard suggesting you draw a pencil mesh over a photo of the ex-PM), Joseph Beuys' wooden postcards, Rachel Whiteread's hole-punched cards...

Two cards stood out, though. It's always the personal connections ultimately, isn't it?

The first, a 1908 Donald McGill postcard titled "In the Asylum".  The image shows a red-nosed man, grinning from behind the bars of a cell door.

Above him is a sign:

CAUSE: Picture-postcard collecting
CONDITION: Up the pole

REMARKS: Thinks he's a Gibson Girl 

How cruel Donald!? How cruel.

The second card was made by Belgian artist Francis Alÿs. I first came across Alÿs when a friend showed me this film of him painting a line in the middle of a road in Panama. I love it.

This is the Alÿs postcard in Cooper's book:

Image from artpdf blog 

Copies were given to visitors to the Tate exhibition of Alÿs' work in 2010.

The card caught my eye, not just because it was made by Alÿs but because of the contrast with a Rough Sea postcard I bought recently.

The Rough Sea series was one of the most popular in Edwardian Britain. Published by Tuck's, some say it tapped into Britain's island psyche, others that the cards have a deep erotic charge.

While I really like Rough Sea cards, I resist collecting them. One thing I have learnt is that to avoid ending up in McGill's collecting asylum you have to set some limits.

Rather than buying it for the image, I bought it to add to my collection of old postcard messages. Specifically, I bought it to add to a new category of cards I've noticed: empty postcards, postcards without written messages.

Increasingly, I'm coming to think of them as secret postcards.

RCA Secret opens on Thursday 14 March at the Dyson Building in Battersea, London. The sale takes place on Saturday 23 March. If you're going, good luck!

Lost in admiration

At a fair, most collectors will come and go from a dealer in a matter of minutes. “Any new churches today, Brian?” “Don’t think so, but you’re welcome to have a look."

They know what they want. And a dealer's cards will be ordered by popular collecting categories to make searching easy. It might be a certain place or artist that a collector is after, or pictures of a famous Edwardian actor or politician.

I'll typically stay hunched over one or two stalls the entire time, until my eyes tire.

A good message could be in any box.

While staying in one position can be exhausting, the advantage is you get to eavesdrop on passing trade...

Dealer 1 (holding his friend’s card): I’ve never seen such a good gypsy card. I mean the expressions on their faces…

Dealer 2: I found another one as well which was pretty amazing. And that was £80. How many times have I ever had great photos of gypsies like that in the last 40 years?

Dealer 1: Who does get them?

Dealer 2: Jeremy, not very often.

Dealer 1: Who does get them? They’re just not there. No, no.

Dealer 2: I won’t see another card like that for 20 years. And I won’t be around in another 20 years. I only got them because I would pay whatever people ask for them which means you’re not making money. That’s the problem….

Dealer 1: A card like that will always appreciate in value…. I am lost in admiration for that one.