Find the Perfect Rhino for your Postcard Collection

Rhinoceros for Postcrossing and Collecting

My postcard-collecting readers always expect a wide ranging selection of postcards on the given topic,  which today is the mighty rhinoceros. Postcards may show stunningly beautiful original art created by my fellow Zazzlers--or they may show vintage, cute, funny, clever treatments. Often postcards will show the subject alongside pets! Would you believe I found nothing showing a cat with a rhinoceros, much less a rhino with a dog. But vintage postcards of the rhinoceros, vintage we got! So today let's get started in the 1500s, when in the thick of Portuguese exploration of the seas and the coasts, a rhinoceros was brought from India to Lisbon. 

Earliest Rhino Image in Europe

Our first postcard shows a magnified section from Printmaker Albrecht Dürer's The Rhinoceros. The detail incorporated is stunning, though it may not be entirely accurate. Dürer never saw the animal; he created his extremely famous woodcut from a few words of description accompanying an anonymous sketch. Durer's original woodcut includes the verbiage sent to him by another printer, which reads, in heavy stylized German script, something to the effect of  In the year 1515 on 1 May was brought to our King of Portugal to Lisbon such a living animal from India called a rhinoceros...It has the color of a toad and is covered and well protected with thick scales, and in size it is as large as an elephant. The woodcut then goes on to say that this herbivore is a vicious and deadly enemy of the elephant, providing gory detail about what happens when the two animals meet. I am not at all sure any of this is true. National Geographic Wild says the Rhino is not usually aggressive, but naturally the rhino will most certainly defend against an elephant when need be. Nonetheless, the goal of the artist was to imaginatively elaborate through woodblock texture, the strength of the armor of this magnificent animal. In fact Dürer adds a completely nonexistent horn to the back of his rhinoceros. The mythical dorsal horn is shown on another version of Dürer's print down at the end of this blog post.

Rhino Woodcut Postcard
by WINDYDESIGN

Rhinoceros on a postcard as depicted in the days of Queen Victoria

Cigar merchants may have been unaware of any such tensions between the elephant and the rhinoceros, when they created an attractive piece of rhino memorabilia.  Known popularly as Love on the Nile, the vintage cigar box label dates from the Victorian era. Along the banks of the Nile, with the pyramids in the background, Mr. Rhino holds a beautiful bouquet of flowers and is courting Miss Elephant. Again, quite a bit of artistic license is taken. If you are curious about whether any species of rhinoceros ever inhabited the northern reaches of the Nile, you could always check a historical range map.

Love On The Nile Vintage Cigar Label Art Postcard

More realistic Depiction of Rhinoceros

A renowned Swiss naturalist known for his lovely lithographs of mammals, birds and reptiles, Karl Joseph Brodtman was highly skilled at capturing the beauty of animals and did so with a high degree of scientific accuracy. As such we find that his Indian Rhinoceros sketch made in 1827 is very true to life.

Brodtmann Rhinoceros Sketch Postcard
by worldartgroup

Rhinos on the Brink 

Some ten thousand rhinos were lost to poaching in the past decade, meaning that rhinos are truly in danger of extinction. Quite a few conservation-minded postcards at Zazzle reflect this grim reality. Poachers kill the rhinos, cut off the horns and sell the horns as medicine. In parts of Asia, there is a huge demand for this part of the rhino's head, as people mistakenly believe that the horn is effective as part of traditional Chinese medicine. Rhinoceros horns are made of keratin, which is exactly what fingernails and hair are made of. There are no special or magical ingredients in the horn of a rhino. 

Here are some eye-catching rhino conservation postcards bringing attention to the poaching problem,  one of which points to a website where you can find more information and learn how you can help. Ironically most of the rhino poaching in Africa occurs inside of a national park! A rhino with a beautiful horn and some birds hitching a ride on his back is shown below on a postcard for that particular national preserve---South Africa's famous Kruger National Park.

Save The Rhino Postcard

Save the Rhino Postcard

Kruger National Park South Africa Rhino Watercolor Postcard
by Kris_and_Friends

The Rhinoceros and Biodiversity

Being one of Africa's Big Five, the rhinoceros holds a special place in the amazing array of animal life we currently enjoy in our world. This lovely purple postcard shows the rhinoceros along with just a few of the thousands of creatures making up the world of wildlife. With its aged and worn look, this attractive purple grid of animals would be warmly received by any animal-loving postcard collector, or anyone interested in conservation.

Purple Aged and Worn Animal Kingdom Pattern Postcard

Cute Baby Rhinos and Fun Rhinoceros Puns on Postcards

On a lighter note, the rhinoceros can be adorably cute, particularly the baby of the species. Here's a young rhino with cute fingernails and a tiny white horn, trying to hold her balance. She reminds me of a four month old baby learning to sit up.

Rhinoceros Gifts Kids Rhino Gifts Rhinoceros Postcard

Here's a fun rhino postcard perfect to send to a grandchild who loves rainbows! You will find it comes in several colors, but my favorite is the Rhinbow Rainbow on the Hot Pink.

Rhinbow Rhino Rainbow Postcard Pink
by NicePuns

Rhinoceros in Art

There are a number of beautiful original art rhinoceros postcards on Zazzle. I love this touching evening scene of mother rhino and rhinoceros baby. I can just imagine a jeep full of safari riders enjoying sundowners while appreciating this rare and tender sight. This night scene postcard leaves room; you can personalize this Rhino POD Postcard with your own message.

Rhinos Postcard

Rhino Postcard Variety and Another Woodcut View of The Rhinoceros

As you can see, there are plenty of options for postcard collectors looking for rhinoceros postcards, and for that matter, those working to assemble a postcard collection of Africa's Big Five. It used to be that hunters would go to Africa hoping to bring home the head of an elephant, a lion,  a leopard, a buffalo and a rhinoceros. Now more people go to Africa armed with cameras, and they are still looking for the Big Five. If you can't get to Africa or to India just now, get yourself some postcards of rhinos and other charismatic megafauna. And keep a few on hand. You never know. When you draw your next Postcrossing address--your Postcard collecting friend may want to receive a wonderful postcard of a rhino!

Vintage Rhinoceros Postcard
by WINDYDESIGN

If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds no cost.

Lemons on Postcards

Lemons on postcards you can personalize  

We see them everywhere, but what do we really know about lemons? Do we even know where the lemon comes from? It's not clear, but maybe this small evergreen tree is native to northeast India. Gene studies show it to be a hybrid between the bitter orange and the citrus medica, a large fragant citrus used in Asian cuisine. Lemons have been in Europe for some two thousand years; it was lemon juice which eventually kept seafarers from getting sick with scurvy. There are many varieties of lemons,  grown in tropical areas around the globe. These range from the Meyer Lemon, awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit,  to Italy's Sorrento lemon used in the making of the sought after limoncello liqueur, to the Eureka lemon we find in the supermarket because that variety flowers and fruits all year long. But the only thing we care about for this article is that lemons and lemon trees are pretty, and make a great subject for art on a postcard!

Just Lemons

If you want a beautiful print of lemons and greenery on a postcard, this could be the one! This is a beautiful watercolor all over surface pattern, meaning the image used for this light and airy postcard can be used on larger items like fabric or even wallpaper (the old fashioned kind that goes on the wall you are facing when you are looking at your computer screen, which may indeed have wallpaper as used in the more modern techy sense.)  This pretty lemon design was perhaps created for use in farmhouse decor. But in this case, it's on a lovely little postcard you can send to say hello.

 

WATERCOLOR LEMONS POSTCARD

Vintage Lemons on Postcards

Vintage is a popular and wide ranging style. Sometimes vintage means art from the vintage of another era, and sometimes vintage can refer to a design made to look old.  This vintage image features a ripe, yellow lemon with leaves on top set against an antiqued craqueline background of whites and off-whites. What a nice postcard to send to vegetarians and cooks. And don't forget any postcard can be put into a small frame and used for decorating. Traditional designers might use this in kitchens and dining rooms. As the verbiage on the design is French language, le citron meaning the lemon, you might consider this pretty fruit postcard for a teacher gift. 

A Yellow Lemon Fruit Postcard

Vintage designs can arise from scientific art work, some of it done for natural world studies as was this lovely  Lemon Citrus Fruit Botanical Limonium Illustration by Charles Henry Dessalines d'Orbigny. He was a  French botanist and the younger brother of a South American explorer who gathered specimens in his collecting travels. When his brother brought them home, the scientist-artist identified many of the flowering plants and made beautiful botanical images we still can enjoy today.

 

Lemon Citrus Fruit Botanical Limonium Illustration Postcard

Another scientific illustrator painted these lemons so well that they look like they've been photographed.  Ellen Isham Schutt worked for the United States Department of Agriculture between 1904 and 1914, painting over 700 watercolors of fruits and nuts for the USDA. In 1910 she painted the Eureka Lemon mentioned above. If you missed that part, scroll up in case there's a quiz. 😉

 

Lemons (Citrus Limon) Fruit Watercolor Painting Postcard
by BrightArtwork

Lemon Trees

Did I mention lemon trees are pretty? Here's the proof. With a little care, a Lisbon Lemon or a Meyer Lemon can do well in a pot. The prettier the pot, the better for a nice postcard.

Lemon Tree Postcard

Here's a cute Meyer Lemon Tree in a Terra Cotta pot. I wasn't sure which lemon tree I liked better, so I am showing you both.

Lemon Tree postcard

Lemons and Weddings

I don't keep up with this kind of thing, but either now, or at some time in the recent past, lemons must have been a popular theme for weddings, because it's easy to find wedding invitations with lemons. Here's a pretty RSVP postcard which is probably part of a large suite including all the kinds of wedding stationery you could possibly imagine. If you are just postcard shopping, this card may not be exactly what you were hoping for, but on the other hand, maybe you are planning a lemon wedding. Click through to the card and then click the handy personalize button to fill in the entire form and find the rest of the wedding stationery suite.
 

Lemons & Greenery Wedding RSVP with Meal Choice Postcard

Fun with Lemon Art

Here's a cute little bathing beauty cat lounging on a pool float that looks like a lemon. It's listed as an Announcement Postcard, and I guess the postcard creator expects you to use the Edit Design tool to add your own new address info. Just click Edit Design if you want to try it out. This lemon cat moving announcement would be ideal for anyone who has moved  their cat and the rest of the family from some cold and rainy place like Oregon to Sunny Florida.

Cat Floating On Lemon Pool Float Announcement Postcard

I am not sure which artist comes to mind. Could it be Matisse? Matisse did a lot of work with lines on walls and other surfaces, and we do have stripes on the purple wallpaper here. Also the perspective looks pretty Matissy, don't you think?  On the other hand, one of the tag words the creator uses is clip, and then art, so perhaps this postcard design is made from some kind of clipart?  The description at Zazzle is A black and white cat sitting next to a table that has a big blue bowl full of lemons on it. She is wearing a collar with a heart. I just think the color of this little lemon cat makes this a super fun postcard.

Lemons Postcard

Lemons as Transportation

Zest by Florent Bodart is an illustration which seems pretty famous now that I have taken a little spin around the web looking for more information about the artist and the drawing. I didn't find any info, but I still like the card and thought you would too. Lemon slices do seem reminiscent of bicycle wheels in all their spokey splendor.

Zest | Florent Bodart Postcard

Lemons and Lemonade

And finally, let's end with another lemon postcard with purple. I just love this Purple Violets, Lemonade Mason Jar Thinking of You Postcard.  We're told we can make someone smile with these pretty purple violets surrounding a mason jar with lemonade and lemon slice. I believe it. Moreover, this card is an excellent example of how you can personalize a Zazzle postcard in order to send a custom message. In this case, you can click through to the card, and find the Personalize button. Then you click there, and replace the current greeting with your own. Same can be done on any of the cards featured above, except most of these particular cards will not have that particular button. Instead you click the Edit Design button and then use the left panel to add your own text. It's pretty easy and it's what makes Zazzle unusual in the Print on Demand world. You can print up just one lemon postcard with your own message. How cool is that!

If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds nothing to the cost.

 

Purple Violets, Lemonade Mason Jar Thinking of You Postcard

The Symbolism of a Lemon Postcard

The symbolism of lemons has a long and varied history. Though they are sour and can symbolize bitterness, lemons have other more positive meanings. Love potions of the Middle Ages used lemon blossoms due to a belief that this bright yellow fruit symbolized fidelity, and romance and adoration. Because lemons and other citrus fruits were imported to temperate cities from faraway tropical lands, lemons came to symbolize wealth. And of course lemons seem to have cleansing properties, so they can be a symbol of purification.  Many societies consider the lemon equivalent to love and friendship. I suppose this is why images of lemons are used in wedding invitation art. And this is also why you will want to send lemons on postcards to your friends and those you love. 

Angels on Postcards

Angels Appear

A wide array of angels appears on postcards because people love angels and find them comforting. They are commonly found because postcard creators have so many sources to choose from. Card makers may resurrect angel images from ancient books, they may paint angels or draw them,  or make an etching of a host of angels. We've all seen plenty of  depictions of adorable cherubic angels;  these can appear on Christmas cards, birthday cards, and postcards as well. Angel art on postcards and in other forms is sometimes gifted to hospitals, hospices and nursing homes in hopes that the afflicted will find solace. 

Stained glass windows in churches will often feature angels in a variety of scenes. And of course there's the old standby of  beautiful angels carved in stone. These heavenly angels are often found in church gardens, home gardens,  and in graveyards.  From the ninth century, when monks hid away in isolated towers to illuminate the Book of Kells,  and even well before that, right up to today, artists have devoted their creativity and their time to creating art with angels as their inspiration. And now in the POD era, artists and designers are constantly unearthing or creating more angel art to apply to a Print On Demand products such as a t-shirt, a greeting card, or a postcard. As there are so many angel postcards, they are not hard to find, but the sheer size and variety of the offerings is overwhelming, so I have selected a few favorite angel postcards to share with you here.

St. Michael the Archangel Postcard

We start with an antique lithograph of Saint Michael the Archangel, who is not a saint at all, but rather an angel, and the leader of all angels, being above all the others in rank. He has four duties, one of which is to combat Satan. It would be nice if sending this postcard right now could help in the fight against evil.

St. Michael the Archangel (RLS 12) Postcard
by Saints_Aplenty

By the way, always check the description area of the Zazzle page if you want to know more about the design on the product. At the time of this writing, and depending on the device through which you are accessing Zazzle, you may find the creator's design description somewhere under the product picture in an area called About this Design. This is not to be confused with the info entitled About this Product. In that area, you can learn about the product--what type of material a shirt is made of, for example, or in the case of postcards, the size of the card, the weight of the paper used and details about the printing process. 

If you want to know more about what is going to be printed ON the product, you want to see the info about the design, therefore, you check the About this Design section. Here you can perhaps read about where the art comes from, who made it, why. You might learn about the colors used, or how to change the border, or any number of other interesting tidbits, to the extent that the creator has decided to share this type of info. 

Some, but not all, Zazzle creators add useful information in the About this Design section. In the case of this handsome St. Michael postcard, we learn that the illustration comes out of a 1911 book called Red Letter Saints: Being a Series of Biographies of those Saints for which Proper Collects, Epistles and Gospels.  This particular Zazzle creator also offers some ideas as to how to alter the postcard design to be more to our liking. Maybe you would like a blue starry background rather than the yellow background shown. You can do that on Zazzle! You can change many designs slightly or completely. (Rarely you will find a design which the creator has locked down, in which case you will not see a button which invites you to edit the design).  This creator even goes so far as to share the hex codes used in the lithographs found throughout the book she referenced. (These codes can be used for precise replication of a shade or a color.) Sometimes the creator has added very little info, but it's always worth looking, because the more you know about the product you are considering, the happier you will be with your postcard purchase.

Yellow Angel Postcard 

This lovely yellow angel is offered on Zazzle by a charity with the mission of providing inspirational art for mental health wellness. You can read more in the informative creator message, once again found in the About this Design area, where the creator tells us she has made angels in a number of colors and suggests that you pick your personal guardian angel color. By searching in the shop, we may find some other options we would like. These days quite a few people are probably turning to the idea of a personal guardian angel.

If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds nothing to the cost.

Yellow Angel Postcard

Cute Angels on a Holiday Postcard

Here we have cute and holiday all wrapped up in one super sweet postcard, showing three adorable cherubic angels singing us a religious Christmas carol. This adorable card also happens to be an example of a Zazzle product which does not offer much in the way of description. It's cute and Christmassy and that's about all we know. Any time you want to know more about the image or the design of a Zazzle postcard, you can contact the creator and just ask. Following a few links should get you to a place where you see the name of the creator and a message button.  

 

Sweet Angels Silent Night Postcard

Pets as Angels on a Postcard

Would any of my blog posts be complete without a look at how a dog or a cat can be worked into just about any subject area, at any time, for any reason? Here, pugs invade the Renaissance. Maybe you recognize these satirical dogs as being quite similar to an ultra famous detail of a painting by one of the top painters of the period. Click through either the pug card or the related card below it, or both, and read the descriptions to find out more. 

 

Angelic Pug Cherub Gift Items Postcard

It's often said that there is no such thing as a new idea in art, and that artists are constantly taking inspiration from wherever they can find it. Iconic art from the sixteenth century offers plenty of ideas and opportunity.

Sweet Italian Angels Renaissance Masterpiece Postcard

Vintage Angels on a Postcard

Another unending supply of inspiration for postcard creators comes from the greeting card artists of earlier eras. Modern day artists find examples among the massive treasure trove of vintage cards. They might use the design as is, or touch it up some, or slice up the greeting card art and mix and match pieces of it in new ways using a basket from one card, a greeting from another, perhaps superimposing these on a vintage figure from a totally different card.  I am guessing this Loving Greeting card with a little curly-haired winged angel and a basket of pink roses is pretty much the same as when originally printed, which may have been around the turn of the century.  I am not even sure which holiday this would be for. It might be more of an all occasion postcard. 

Remember how I keep telling you that at Zazzle, you can change designs up to make a product more to your taste? I have done that here. The original card was set against a nice blue background, but I decided to try a brown background. And then I wasn't exactly sure about that, so I tried a lighter brown. You can buy the card with either background or with the original blue or you can use white, black or any other color for your background. Whatever change you make, you are still supporting the creator who posted the card.

If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same, even in a case where I have altered the postcard design. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds nothing to the cost.

Angel Greetings Cute Vintage Floral Postcard

Angel Greetings Cute Vintage Floral Postcard

This is a more religious vintage card based on what the creator tells us is a painting of two angels with blue and white cloaks holding a gold cord and ringing a bell in the sky. Beyond that, we have little to go on. I changed the card up a little to see what I could do with the border.

 

Pretty Angels With Bell Postcard

Stone Angels on a Postcard

Some of the postcards on Zazzle are photographic creations, such as this photograph of a colonial era church on Maryland's Eastern Shore at Wye Mills. I photographed the church, keeping the church graveyard in the foreground and at the same time,  photographed a number of the headstones and sculptures found on site. Later, in what we photographers call post, I enlarged the angel you see here, which was just a small sculpture placed on one of the graves.  Then I added her to the photo, making her look like she is watching over the church and all who worship there--and in my mind, watching over everyone. I am not religious, but even I know that we could use a big dose of this kind of help right about now. This card is available at Zazzle, by clicking through. And you can also buy a blue and yellow version of the same postcard.

Angel Watching over Church Postcard
by WINDYDESIGN

In addition to changing the design on a postcard, you can also take almost any design you see on Zazzle and transfer it to a different product, especially a postcard. This is because a postcard is a small item, therefore most images found on Zazzle will be large enough to print nicely on a postcard. (All my readers want to support the artists who makes POD sites possible, so rest assured, once again, that the creator still gets credit for sale even when you transfer the art to some other product on Zazzle. Zazzle has coding in place to make sure this happens.)

The aspect will not always match, meaning the length and width arrangement of an image that fits on a certain kind of greeting card may not work on with the length and width of the postcard. In this case, I loved this stone angel so much that I took it from the greeting card it was meant for and used it on the postcard. In order to make the image fit nicely, I added a border. To make sure the border would be complementary to the picture,  I picked up a color from inside the image and created the border using that color.

Postcard

Hopefully you will enjoy the vast variety of postcards available on Zazzle, appreciating them all the more now that you know a little bit about how to navigate to find some more information. Have fun making changes of your own to the postcards you like. Most importantly I hope this blog post about angels finds you well and secure during troubled times.

Barns and Farms on Postcards

The Charms of Farm Life

Many a postcard shows the beauty of the farm

The bucolic scenes of a field full of grain, or an old weathered barn can be a relaxing respite from the ravages of the times upon us. Combine that with the tools of farming, ancient and modern, and you have quite a nice topic for a postcard collection. Sometimes buildings look farmy even when they are just sheds behind the house. That may be the case with our first feature, a highly decorative building in Cranford NJ, which may serve now as a garage. Some of these buildings may have at one time been carriage houses, a place to keep horses overnight or to park the surrey. This one almost looks like a barn, but it's not.

If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds nothing to the cost.

Barn - Our old shed Postcard

Farm equipment can be fascinating and quite photogenic, such as this hand operated Amish corn cutter left in the field. Looks like a lot of work and the operator surely would be sitting in the hot late summer sun for hours to get the job done.

Amish Corn Cutter in Field-Postcard Postcard

Vintage art on postcards is often reminiscent of farms or farming. Here a young lad wearing blue jeans, a red vest and a wide brimmed sunhat is doing his best to carry an ear of corn three times his size. Reminds me of when I asked my two year old grandson to pick me up and he actually tried it! This would be a nice postcard to send at Thanksgiving.

vintage autumn boy with corn holiday postcard

Windmills dotted the west many years ago, bringing water to the surface to help keep those corn crops from drying out in the heavy prairie winds. Now we have armies of the things which were once a picturesque and infrequent punctuation of the landscape. Seen here with corn, birds, a fence and a lowering sun, this windmill towers over a beautiful farm.

Farmyard and windmill postcard

I have been surprised to find in my internet travels that some people don't want black and white postcards. Many other people do. And it's no wonder, as a simplified image can make a striking statement. This tractor, is reduced to its basic essential lines, would be good for collectors of postcards featuring the working woman,  in addition to those who collect postcards featuring silhouettes and farming.

Farmer Postcard

There is no better subject for landscape painting than a bucolic farm in the autumn season. This beautiful watercolor painting of the North Carolina piedmont in the fall, comes complete with a white barn, or is that a corn crib? To complete the look, we have some leaning spruce trees and  a wobbly old fence.  As structures age, they take on a more weathered, organic look. Maybe this is why we can feel so at home with these soothing images.

Anderson's Field Postcard

A barn itself can be a work of art. Unlike the pole buildings so common in the countryside today, these historic structures were frequently built with an eye for scale and balance. And they are so often red! I wonder why barns are not baby blue, or green or navy. When I take a ride on country roads, the predominant color of the old barns I see is red. This one made a great subject for the artist who found it so alluring.  Tim O'toole is an Ohio born plein air painter inspired by Claude Monet. His work is Contemporary Impressionism.

Red Barn View Postcard

Lying around in the hayloft chatting with friends looks like such a relaxing way to spend a day on summer vacation, or more likely, in the case of this vintage farming postcard, after some of the neverending farm chores are done.

Vintage Art Boys on Farm in Summer Postcard

The details of a farm scene are golden. Photographers love to roam a farm, pointing the lens at the pieces of a old building, the doors, the windows, the parts of machines, and the textures.  The seed heads of this wheat in the setting sun are on fire with beauty.

Golden Wheat Postcard

But not all the vegetation that grows on a farm is wanted! Farmers need to do a lot to combat weeds, sometimes by smothering weeds with woodchips, and sometimes with chemical help. In the case of smaller fields of vegetables, a good bit of hand weeding may be required. I don't live on a farm, but I have this problem myself and you are definitely invited to my weeding!

Wildflower Week Invitation Postcard
by WINDYDESIGN

How can you make a relic of an old western barn seem even more rustic? Display it on panels of weathered wood. That technique is used here to complete a lovely countryside scene of a wheat field, a red bard a fence, and a textured sky.

Distressed Wood Rustic Western Country Red Barn Postcard

This farm postcard shows a wheelbarrow left out next to the clapboard exterior wall of an old farm building in monochrome tones, the hallmarks of an old farmstead.

old window wooden wheelbarrow rustic farmhouse pos

On this Iowa country postcard, we see a slightly more modern farm complete with silos for grain storage. But still we have what color on the barn? Red.  And what is the crop? Corn. A working farm can be quite a collection of buildings serving various purposes. I count seven, though I am sure I am missing some.

USA, IOWA, Froelich: Old farm Postcard

Here's a lovely farm watercolor by Sharon Sharpe. Misty skies over wavy fields of grain at the end of the growing season.  I have zeroed in on a part of the original card to make what you see here. There is a beautiful Appaloosa horse in the other  part of the scene. Because it's Zazzle, you can very often go into the design tool and maximize the part of the art that you want to buy on your postcard. That's the beauty of a POD Postcard! Maybe there will be another blog post coming soon, all about Farm Animals on Postcards, and you may just find the Appaloosa over there when it appears. Subscribe so you don't miss it. 

OLD BARN & APPALOOSA by SHARON SHARPE Postcard

Vintage Cat Postcards

Vintage Cats on Postcards

Cats in the Profile can Bring Cats on Cards

On postcard sharing sites, it's often a custom to write a little profile indicating what you are interested in. When someone is given your address and gets ready to mail you a postcard, they might just work quite hard to find a card that would fit your particular interests. I am guessing cats and vintage are particularly common in postcard sharing profiles, so I have collected a few high quality vintage cat design postcards here. Maybe it will give postcard collectors and postcard senders some ideas!

Vintage, or Like-Vintage? 

Some Zazzlers will post products with a great description and others will just post cool art for us to enjoy and leave us guessing as to origins. This particular cat is tagged as vintage, but we have no further information. It's entitled Cat and Letter; letters make up part of the illustration but we have no information as to when the cat was drawn, nor by whom and maybe we can get a clue as to the provenance of the writing by looking, but maybe not. This vintage cat postcard may simply be a cat postcard with a distressed and vintage look. I love it!

If Zazzle should send me a penny or two when someone buys something I have carefully chosen to display on this blog, the price stays the same. The card costs nothing extra. For the reader, my quest to find and post some nice cards in which you might be interested, adds nothing to the cost.

Cat and letter poster postcard

Memory Lane

When I was a kid, paper dolls were still a thing. I am in love with  this adorable Halloween paper doll postcard, which is attributed to Grace Drayton as part of her Dolly Dingle paper doll oevre. The Zazzler has done some work to update this adorable piece which she calls retro. Drayton was working early in the twentieth century, so we may be talking super-retro here, as this particular cute little cherubic-faced Halloween Witch may date as far back as 1910. We don't know what kind of updating has been done. Many Zazzlers will find designs which have fallen out of copyright and will clean them up a little and use them to make mugs, postcards, shirts and more. Others will take pieces of the designs and create something entirely new for a POD (print on demand) poster or greeting card or  even maybe a keychain. I am not sure what is the case here. Has this design been used as-is? Or has it been cut up and rearranged?  Perhaps a fan of Drayton and her Campbell Soup advertising work will chime in and let us know a little more about this sweet little girl with her witch hat and dress and her scary pumpkin and sweet little lucky black cat. I didn't love the way this illustration fit on the card, so I added a color coordinated border, because that kind of permutation is easily done on Zazzle's design tool. Speaking of the design tool, I checked out the illustration using the design to ascertain that the art will look good when printed, and it seems it will. But I'm not so sure about the text. It does not seem super sharp. As always with POD sites, Caveat Emptor! Check everything out carefully before you add something to your cart.

Adorable Halloween Witch 🎃 Paper Dolls Postcard

Art Nouveau

This Julie de Graag cat is definitely vintage, dating from 1918. De Graag was a part of the Art Nouveau movement, working at the turn of the 19th Century. After growing up in The Hague, she studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and became a celebrated draftsman, graphic artist and painter. Her refined graphic work and sharp lined engravings are still celebrated to this day. As such, her vintage cat postcard seen here would be a lovely treat for any collector who loves vintage cats, or Dutch art. You may also find postcard site participants who appreciate certain colors. Orange and Black lovers will want this card.

Julie de Graag Postcard
by PhoenixRetro

Pretty Postcards

Sometimes you are not sure if it's vintage. All you know is that it looks good! Is this cat on the moon a historical find?  Or is it a drawing made to look vintage? I am having trouble finding more information about this Black Cat on the Moon Postcard so I can't say for sure. All I know is that this is a popular design and is for sale on many of the popular POD sites, appears on Pinterest in quite a few versions, some with artist signature and some without. This design is already probably well known to anyone hoping to find a novel vintage cat postcard on my little blog post, lol. So I probably should be showing something else in this spot.   But this is a super sweet blue and yellow postcard with an adorable little star, and a Yellow Man In the Moon upon which is seated our Black Cat. This card is sure to be treasured by any cat lover who finds it in his mailbox one day even if they have already seen this illustration somewhere in internet land.

Black Cat on the Moon Postcard

Repurposing Old Books

We'll  finish up with this lovely vintage cat postcard repurposed by Artist and Zazzler Shelli Fitzpatrick. After finding the image of the beautiful red headed child, in an antique story book, Fitzpatrick cleaned the image up, colorized it, added a border and affixed a cat lover's quote. The child is petting a cute black kitten with a ribbon around its neck. Another nice treat for a cat-loving postcrosser who is eagerly waiting for a postcard to come from parts unknown and bring delight to the mailbox.

Beautiful Red Haired Child with Kitten Cat Quote Postcard
by RecycledVintageArt