I'm Coming 2 C U

Nice contrast here between poorly but agreeably printed background and the embossed tin (?) used for the rail car.

Just don't go any faster.

Pittsburgh Cowboy

Came in the mail this week, and shoots up to the top of the list of my favorite late 19th-c. cabinet cards.  He's from Pittsburgh and a dandy of quite remarkable composure.  So much to like--hat, coat, and mustache, obviously --but also the light sharp eyes, and seeming lack of eyebrows. 

He's now on top of the gym locker file cabinet in my office--so I can keep on looking at him.

The Efficacious Word

Another 'not exactly a postcard' offering --- but an interesting souvenir picked up in Lewes, Sussex, the other week when we were staying in Brighton. Talked to the man who runs the Tom Paine Printing Press (it's on the High Street): he'd devised this broadsheet.  Just before he decamped for the 13 Colonies, Tom Paine lived and wrote in the house across the street.

For typophiles especially.   Click to enlarge.

Clarence

A boy named Clarence--feigning annoyance, among other things.

Crepuscular Fancy

Not old, not vintage, just a fabulous postcard on a fabulous theme.

The Royal Pavilion (Brighton) by dusk.  Took BV there last week: my third visit, her first.  Delightful, diverting--as always.

Postcards from the 15th Century

Four lovely faces from the rood screen at Binham Priory, Norfolk.  The painted figures were covered over by Protestant fanatics during the Dissolution of the Monasteries, who also inscribed passages on the screen from the Cranmer (English) Bible.  The whitewash has gradually begun to flake off, revealing the pictures once again.

The mash-up of imagery and text seems utterly contemporary, despite the age of the screen.  Could be a postered wall in the Mission.

Child Goddess (Artemis)

According to legend on back this RPPC shows Artemis/ Diana, goddess of chastity and the hunt.  Comes from a French pc series (ca. 1900) of gods and goddesses represented by child models.  

Not sure, however,  I would I have known which goddess this little girl was meant to portray without the explanatory title.  She seems to lack any of the conventional emblems of Artemis--the crescent moon, the bow and arrow, dog and/or accompanying virginal maidens. 

A 'concept' piece that doesn't quite work.

Yu Need

Only a couple of days late.  My excuse: doddling around many thousands of miles away--in Brighton by the seaside.

Oedipus

RPPC I've had for a while--no identifying information ---but the Greek theme suits.  (We left Rhodes today, now in fuggy grey tourist-packed London.)  Yesterday--at the Temple of Athena on the rocky peak above the town of Lindos--we scrabbled over countless ancient stones and broken columns very like those in the background here.   Lindos a wind-swept mystery, high above the blue Aegean, and surely one of the most captivating sights this indefatigable tourist has ever seen.  Blue wildflowers, yellow too.

The actor here wearing the mask of old ruined blind Oedipus, of course--Oedipus at Colonus.  The element of photo-uncanniness: the very young-looking arms of the actor.  As in Exquisite Cadavers game, head and arms seem to come from different beings.