DOLLS OF MANY LANDS greeting cards

To see other doll cards from this series click on "Dolls of Many Lands" in the labels below. This is the last of the cards in the box.

DOLLS OF MANY LANDS greeting cards

To see other doll cards from this series click on "Dolls of Many Lands" in the labels below.

DOLLS OF MANY LANDS greeting cards

To see other doll cards from this series click on "Dolls of Many Lands" in the labels below.

DOLLS OF MANY LANDS greeting cards

Every once in a while my best friend puts together a fun box that she ships to me. I never know what will be inside. This past week I received such a box and I have gone through it layer by layer, taking my time, a little bit each day. She said I was treating it like an archaeological dig. That describes it perfectly. It has wonderful items, many of which I will share. The first is below.

Dolls of Many Lands greeting cards made by Tichnor Brothers of Boston were a gift to my friend from her grandparents when she was little. They are lovely and remind me a bit of the Hallmark cards that are so popular to collect. Over the next few posts I will feature the cards.

Sadly I cannot find any information about who illustrated these cards.

Click on any image to see it larger.








Is it just me or does the Eskimo doll look like singer Keely Smith?

A Trip Back to SANTA'S WORKSHOP

I lived outside Washington D.C. for a few years as a child and for two of those years my family went to Tupper Lake in the Adirondack's for our summer vacations. The best part of those trips was our visit to Santa's Workshop at the North Pole in New York state. I'm telling you I saw Santa. I saw the REAL SANTA and nobody could tell me otherwise.

I have old movie footage of myself waiting in line to meet Santa and then sitting on his lap. I never wanted to leave and my folks had a hard time dragging me away to go look at the rest of the park. I was in awe of the man. For many years when other kids would tell me that Santa was not...well you know...I would say they were wrong because I'd met him at his summer home.

The second year we took our neighbors along on vacation and I have slides of all of the kids touching the North Pole as reindeer wander around us. It was a perfectly joyous place to be and I'm glad to see it still exists and in much the same way as I remember it. It turns out that it is the oldest theme park in the U.S.

One of the years following our visit Santa sent me a postcard of his sleigh. I cherished that card for years, but it got lost along the way. Fortunately I have this set of View-Master reels. Here are a few of the images from one of the reels.







Am I right or am I right? This guy IS SANTA!

Do you have memories of the perfect Santa?





If you're in the North Pole area and have some wee ones with you why not make a stop to see the place. The bairn will remember it for years to come. Here is their website.

The low ENO'S FRUIT SALT diet

Honestly, until I saw this ad in the July 1918 issue of Delineator magazine I'd never heard of this product. Surprisingly I guess it's still being made. You can read about it here and here. Not really interesting enough to post any information other than it was "invented in the 1850s by James Crossley Eno of Newcastle, the Fruit Salt sold like hotcakes to sailors looking for something to keep them healthy on long journeys." However, I love the illustration, which sadly has no signature.

Click on image to see it larger.

And what is an aperient? Not a word I recall ever hearing. Well, it's a drug used to relieve constipation. So, there you go. Learned something new today. Not a total waste.

BROWN ANGELS and THE SCRAPBOOK OF FRANKIE PRATT

I’ve got two books to recommend you might be interested in if you love vernacular photography and ephemera.

The first, Brown Angels, is a small book of original poetry by Walter Dean Myers coupled with really wonderful photos of African-American children from the early 20th century. I found it in a used bookstore after Christmas and fell in love with the images before I'd even read the poems. It’s a really sweet and joyous children’s book, but being a collector of vernacular photography I knew I needed to add it to my collection of photo books, not just my children’s book collection.

The second, The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures, is simply a lot of fun. Author Caroline Preston has taken ephemera from her collection and created a “novel” telling the story of young Frankie Pratt from her teen years to early 20s. Page after page of what appears to be her scrapbook, a story unfolds of young Frankie’s life as she longs to be a writer. Love, college, Paris, and again love provide the storyline. I really can’t say enough about it. Wonderful images throughout and a real treasure trove for artists looking for inspiration.

To see more about either book you can click on the links in the left column to read reviews at Amazon.