This is advice from the US Library of Congress

Preventing Deterioration:

•  Relative humidity is the single most important factor in preserving most photographic materials. Relative humidity levels above 60% will accelerate deterioration. Low and fluctuating humidity may also damage them. Conditions of around 68° F and 30-40% relative humidity are appropriate and easiest to maintain in enclosed areas, such as an interior closet or an air-conditioned room — not in an attic or basement.
• Temperature is the controlling factor in the stability of contemporary color photographs. Storage at low temperatures (40°F or below) is recommended. Appropriate enclosures for cold storage are available from various vendors.
• Exposure to visible and ultraviolet (UV) light is potentially damaging to photographs.  Extended display of photographs is not recommended; however if they must be displayed, use UV-filtering plastic or glass in framing. Exposure of color slides to the light in the projector should be kept to a minimum. Use duplicate slides instead.
• Atmospheric pollutants, particularly sulfur compounds, will cause black and white images to fade and discolor. Gas by-products given off by fresh paint fumes, plywood, deteriorated cardboard and many cleaning supplies may cause accelerated image deterioration. Storage in non-acidic containers is recommended.

Handling Photographic Materials:

•  Avoid touching fragile photographic materials; salts in human perspiration may damage surfaces. Wear clean cotton gloves if possible when handling negatives and prints.

Storage of Photographic Materials:

• House photos in protective enclosures to keep out gritty dirt and dust which can abrade images, retain moisture, and deposit contaminants. Avoid and/or remove materials such as acidic paper or cardboard, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) plastic, rubber bands, paper clips, and pressure-sensitive tapes and rubber cement. Suitable storage materials should be made of plastic or paper, and free of sulfur, acids, and peroxides.
• Paper enclosures must be acid-free, lignin-free, and are available in both buffered (alkaline, pH 8.5) and unbuffered (neutral, pH 7) stock.  Buffered paper enclosures are recommended for brittle prints that have been mounted onto poor-quality secondary mounts and deteriorated film-base negatives. Buffered enclosures are not recommended for contemporary color materials. Paper enclosures are opaque, thus preventing unnecessary light exposure; porous; easy to label in pencil; and relatively inexpensive.
• Suitable plastic enclosures are uncoated polyester film, uncoated cellulose triacetate, polyethylene, and polypropylene. Note: Photographic emulsions may stick to the slick plastic surface at high relative humidity (RH); the RH must remain below 80% or do not use plastic enclosures. Plastic enclosures must not be used for glass plate, nitrate, or acetate-based negatives.
• Prints of historic value should be matted with acid-free rag or museum board for protection. Adhesives should not touch the print.
• Store all prints and negatives that are matted or placed in paper or plastic enclosures in acid-free boxes. If possible, keep negatives separate from print materials. Store color transparencies/slides in acid-free or metal boxes with a baked-on enamel finish or in polypropylene slide pages. Commonly available PVC slide pages, easily identified by their strong plastic odor, should never be used because of their extreme chemical reactivity.
• Place early miniature-cased photographs, including daguerreotypes, ambrotypes and tintypes, carefully into acid-free paper envelopes and house flat; keep loose tintypes in polyester sleeves, or, if flaking is present, in paper enclosures.
• Storage of family photographs in albums is often desirable, and many commercially available albums utilize archival-quality materials. Avoid albums constructed of highly colored pages. Never use commercially available “magnetic” or “no stick” albums for the storage of contemporary or historic photographic prints in black-and-white or color. These materials will deteriorate quite quickly over time.

Cabinet Card

Portrait of 4 Children

Boy with Calf Cabinet Card

However, in the digital age, you have some options for displaying treasured photo images that did not exist previously.

1. Have your negatives and/or prints professionally scanned and stored on a DVD or CD.  ScanCafe comes highly recommended. 
2. Have the digital images reproduced and printed as needed.  You can reprint the images as many times as you’d like.  SmugMug is one of many recommended providers.
3. Create an online scrapbook to share with the world. Flickr is one of many such online services.
4. Have a photo book of your photo album printed, and you can sell copies to friends and relatives. Blurb is one of many recommended providers.

I’m not sure if anyone specifically collects winery postcards, but I wondered as I posted 3 postcards from the 50s or 60s from the Italian Swiss Colony Winery.

The Italian Swiss Colony winery was established in 1881 in the village of Asti 85 miles north of San Francisco. In the 1950s and 60s the Italian Swiss Colony winery was one of most visited destinations in California.    This winery conducted active advertising campaigns and encouraged visitors to come and view their grounds.  Families made annual trips to the winery to tour and taste and picked up many postcards over the years. The “Little Old Winemaker” was a popular advertising mascot in TV commercials of the 1960s.

That postcards from this winery are found fairly often in family accumulations is a testament to their popularity as a vacation destination. Some of the favorite postcards featured costumed characters.  While no longer the tourist destination it once was, this winery now operates as Cellar #8 and Asti Winery.

Well, here I thought I had a perfect topic for a post. I could research it on the web and post a few relevant facts, some photos and links and I’d be done.

How wrong can a person be?

I’ve spent hours trying to find more information about souvenir postcard folders and other than a description of the term from postcardy.com, I got nothing but a bunch of questions. 

So here’s the definition:

Folder. Reproductions of postcard views (about 12 to 18) printed on both sides of a long strip of paper that folds up into an attached wrapper.

Now here are my questions:

• Where did the idea come from?
• Were these popular sellers?
• What did they cost?
• Who decided what images and topics were produced?
• What companies were the biggest producers?
• Does anybody collect these?
• Were they only sold as souvenirs?
• I’ve seen them in white border,linen, litho and chrome.  Are there other formats?
• Is their history the same as postcard history?
• It seems like the images used were also sold as individual postcards on many of the folders.  Is that true of all of them?  Or did some images appear in these that appeared nowhere else?

I recently listed a bunch of vintage postcards of Mission San Juan Capistrano. I associate this mission with the celebration of the Return of the Swallows each year. So I found the mission’s website to find the real story. Turns out that the swallows do return each year, and their return is celebrated on St. Joseph’s Day, March 19th. That’s coming right up, so get your travel plans ready!

…And some books and video on the famous mission from amazon.com. Just click on the photo for a link to amazon.

When you mention “tapestry” to folks of my generation, you are likely to bring to mind the rug like fuzzy tapestries produced in the 1960s with dogs playing cards, wild animals and other subjects. These were largely woven in Italy and imported in enough numbers to have become a joke like paintings of Elvis on velvet. I remember my grandfather bought several from a traveling salesman and gave them to his grandchildren with some fanfare. One graced the basement lair of my oldest brother for a number of years.

So when I listed one of those Italian 60s tapestries and an older one with ladies frolicking this past week, I decided to see if I could find some resources online about collecting tapestries. I actually found very little for the average collector. I found some books on how to weave tapestries and some museum tomes about famous collections.

So to introduce the amazon listings, let me offer a few points about tapestries.

• Tapestry was used as a wall covering and, unlike needlework, was woven on a loom. Also, it was made in much larger sizes than would normally be worked in hand-stitched embroidery; panels of tapestry ten or twelve feet in height and twenty feet long are not uncommon.
• Wool was the material employed principally, but for special purposes silk was used. Gold and silver threads appear in many of the finest examples.
• Brussels was the principal centre of tapestry-weaving from about the year 1500. Subjects included Roman and Biblical history, mythology, and peasant scenes after Teniers. Seventeenth-and eighteenth-century examples are often marred by the fact that time has faded their red dyes to a murky brown. Many Brussels tapestries bear a mark: a shield with a capital B at either side, and individual weavers sometimes added their names or initials.
• In France there were two important factories: Beauvais and Gobelins, both founded in the second half of the seventeenth century. The former was a private concern with State support, the latter was a Royal factory and not until late in the eighteenth century could any of its productions be purchased. Both did work of high quality.
• At Aubusson, also in France, tapestry panels, chair covers and also tapestry carpets were made. Much of the output dates from the nineteenth century, although it is similar in pattern to work of an earlier period.
• Tapestry was woven in Antwerp by Michael and Philip Wauters, who specialized in supplying foreign markets. Many of the panels made popular by other factories were copied with success, and these Flemish tapestries are confused frequently with the English productions they imitate.
• It can be assumed that tapestry was woven in England from an early date; a Royal decree of 1364 refers to the corporation of Tapissers. The earliest surviving pieces, positively of English make, bear dates between about 1580 and 1600 and were made on looms set up at Barcheston, Warwickshire, by William Sheldon. Some fragments of tapestry maps of English counties, and other panels, have survived, and prove that Sheldon sponsored excellent work.
• Tapestry is subject to damage by that enemy of all woollen fabrics: the moth. In addition, its very size and weight lead to deterioration over the years, and the action of sun, damp air and heat and smoke from fires tends to perish the ageing fabric. Repair is feasible, but is apt to be expensive as there is a declining number of experts to whom such work can be entrusted.
• Almost all tapestries left the loom complete with a border, varying in pattern from factory to factory and over the years, after the manner of a picture frame. In the course of time, these borders have often been mutilated or replaced, and it should be borne in mind by the collector that the presence or absence of the original border greatly affects the value of a panel.

Hint: Click on photos and links for more information!

Indiana Glass Hen on Nest Candy Dish

 I recently listed a hen on nest candy dish and have noticed that these seem to be regaining popularity.  I had a bit of difficulty researching the maker on my offering, so did a wider search for information on this form of collectible glassware.

So I found very little information in my search that wasn’t derivative of articles by Shirley Smith, who wrote a guidebook (link listed below).  Apparently the glass hen on nest design has been produced in varying forms since the 1860s.  Porcelain ones can date back to the 1790s, and of course, are the most expensive.  According to Smith, there were around 50 companies that made the glass hen on nest, with possibly more than that yet to be documented.  Most are made of pressed glass from molds and were made in every color and form of glass one might imagine. There were also different sizes made from small trinket boxes to cookie jar size.

Hint: Click on links and photos for more information!

Kodachrome Postcard-Wyoming

Collectors know that the term “chrome” refers to any card after 1939 with a shiny paper surface.  The first chromes were made with Kodachrome film by The Union Oil company in 1939 as a series distributed at gas stations.   Kodachrome is an iconic film by Kodak Company beloved for it’s unique “red” tones and it’s stability of images. 

Hint: Click on links and photos for more information!

Lewis & Clark Celebration Reenactment

Astoria, OR is having it’s 200th birthday this year–0ne of the few towns on the West coast that can claim to be that old!  This area just finished celebrating the bicentennial of the Lewis & Clark Expedition (which ended up on the shore of the ocean near Long Beach, my current home town). 

The Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1805–1806 at Fort Clatsop, a small log structure south and west of modern day Astoria. The expedition had hoped a ship would come by to take them back east, but instead endured a torturous winter of rain and cold, then returned east the way they came. Today the fort has been recreated and is now a national monument.

Downtown Astoria, litho postcard

Located near the mouth of the Columbia River, Astoria has always been a center of commerce and river traffic. 

In 1810, John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company sent the Astor Expedition that founded Fort Astoria as its primary fur-trading post in the Northwest, and in fact the first permanent U.S. settlement on the Pacific coast. It was an extremely important post for American exploration of the continent and was influential in establishing American claims to the land.

Fishing Docks in Astoria

Astoria has served as a port of entry for over a century and remains the trading center for the lower Columbia basin, although it has long since been eclipsed by Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington as an economic hub. Traditionally, Astoria’s economy centered on fishing, fish processing, and lumber. Today, tourism, Astoria’s growing art scene, and light manufacturing are the main economic activities of the city. It is a port of call for cruise ships since 1982, after $10 million in pier improvements to accommodate cruise ships.

Astoria Column

In addition to the replicated Fort Clatsop, a popular point of interest is the Astoria Column, a tower 125 feet (38 m) high built atop the hill above the town, with an inner circular staircase allowing visitors to climb to see a panoramic view of the town, the surrounding lands, and the Columbia flowing into the Pacific. The column was built by the Astor family in 1926 to commemorate the region’s early history.

I’m posting some postcards from Astoria soon, and would like to ask you to vote for Astoria in the America’s Coolest Small Town contest. Here’s the Facebook page. You can vote more than once. Astoria really,really, really wants to win this one. Help them out!

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=174432502599551

On Sunday, I ‘m listing a pair of bookends by Gregorian copper.  My experience is that most pieces of Gregorian copper sell, so there must be collectors out there for the brand.  What I like about the pieces is that they are usually hand formed and often are hand hammered.  The designs are organic, with leaf or flower designs.  The copper appears to be coated with a protective covering, as I’ve not seen many with a patina.

So I decided to do a bit of research on the company.  And found very little. 

Apparently a worker named Gregory left Craftsman Studios Co. in Laguna Beach to form Gregorian Copper.  The company was located in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the 1980s. 

Currently a company named Gregorian, Inc.  is  located in Lemmon, South Dakota and offers a wide variety of goods, mostly flipflops and jewelry.  In 1991, they introduced a line of copper postcards made  from 0.004-inch thick copper rolls. The copper is cut to size, and folded around a blank post card. Images are stamped in black paint on the copper-sheathed card and then lacquered. This company website does not feature the hand hammered copper pieces that are labeled Gregorian Copper.   So it is not clear whether or not this is the same company.

Here’s a slideshow of 45′s I’ve posted recently and some that will be posted soon.

Make a free slideshow