Years ago I visited a well-known tool collector and was completely charmed by a series of 1910 postcards that adorned his stairwell. Each postcard featured a modestly dressed woman posing with a tool. The surface of each postcard featured some low-level pun: “Its perfectly plane that I love you.” (Yes, they made a grammatical error there.)
At the bottom of each postcard was written: Copyright 1910 by F. Bluh.
The tool collector had amassed the postcards during many years of searching (before eBay existed). I thought these postcards would make a nice shop decoration and made a note to search some out.
Then life got in the way. John and I had started Lost Art Press, then I quit my job and forgot about the postcards. Earlier this year, Suzanne Ellison stumbled on one of them, she sent it to me and it reignited my desire to collect them.
I now have 12 of them (there are more, but 12 is enough for me). I’m going to frame them this week and decided that you might like to have them for your shop as well. So I scanned each at 300 dpi, did some mild repair and sharpening, and have bundled them in the following .zip file that you can download.
Bluh_1910_postcards
These images are entirely in the public domain. Feel free to print them on photo paper and hang them in your shop or stairwell.
Of the postcards, I have two favorites. The oil can postcard and the handscrew postcard. The oil can postcard says: “If sympathy can’t soothe you, perhaps oil can. What.” What does “what” mean? “What” the heck? The handscrew postcard is just creepy. The woman has a half-lidded “Ringu” expression on her face and the text reads: “I like to be squeezed.”
— Christopher Schwarz, editor, Lost Art Press
Personal site: christophermschwarz.com
