ART & ARTISTS: 2015-01-11

Saturday, 17 January 2015

Large-Letter Postcards - part 1

Birmingham, Alabama
Curt Teich & Co. 1937

These souvenir postcards were hugely popular in in the 1940s and 1950s in America. Companies like Curt Teich and Co. made cards representing every state and almost all the towns and cities (more than 10,000) in the country.

Curt Teich (1877-1974) was a printer who emigrated from Lobenstein, Germany in 1896. Curt Teich and Co. opened in January 1898 in Chicago, Illinois, and closed in 1978. It was the world’s largest printer of view and advertising postcards. Best known for its “Greetings from” series of postcards with big letters, vivid colours, and bold graphic style.

The Curt Teich Postcard Archives, part of the Lake County Discovery Museum at Wauconda, Illinois, is recognised throughout the world as the largest public collection of postcards and related materials.

Another interesting aspect of these Large Letter postcards is that they also were produced during World War Two designed to be sent from military establishments all over the USA. I will feature these at the end of the series in part 6.

I have collected a digital archive of around 2000 Large Letter postcards, but won't be showing all those here. Instead I have chosen interesting examples from across the range of designs and locations represented.