Vintage British Postcards

Well, what better way to celebrate the Colourschool 2nd birthday than with a few vintage British postcards?! These have been sitting in a massive unordered pile in our sideboard for quite some time. They occasionally see the light of day when I fancy sending a someone a ‘thank-you’, but I really should get a proper look at them before they all go. You can literally pick up wads of this sort of classic travel ephemera very cheaply on eBay. Although some of the postcards are so special that they will probably never get used, there are always plenty that can be bear your kind words to someone. Afterall, that’s what they were made for and let’s be honest, it’s a good feeling to get a postcard isn’t it?

What’s lovely about these vintage postcards is that they represent a time of travel in this country before the package holiday arrived and when the motorcar/train trip was one of the highlights of the Summer. The destinations are glamourously flaunted with insane colour saturation and a brain aching contrast level that makes the National Parks and Coastal Resorts of Britain look like an acid drenched Eden – Indeed, some of them are in there own way.

I love the idea that people exchange these postcards as a kind of hallmark of attendance, but also as a visual statement or momento. Somehow, the bleached sickly blandness of a botanical garden in high summer or a thatched cottage in Statford Upon Avon becomes a viable excursion through these postcards. Flickr user ‘Postcard Farm’ has a cracking set of postcards to peruse if you have a moment of internet peace to yourself.