Leather Postcards!

Vintage Postcards

Loch Lomond Tarbet

                [Another post about libraries that are still in business and continue to collect.]

  The Newberry Library is a remarkable one and it is located in Chicago. It was founded just twenty years after the founding of Canada and it has been collecting many things (primarily related to the humanities) since that time.  In 2016 it accepted the Curt Teich Postcard Archives Collection which consists of approximately 2.5 million postcards that had been printed by Curt Teich which was one of the largest producers of postcards.  
   The cards are continually being digitized and recently over 25,000 related to the early 20th century were released. The Raphael Tuck & Sons Oilette Postcards were promoted as “veritable miniature oil paintings," the Oilettes depict landscapes, seascapes, pastoral scenes, and city streets, both in Great Britain and abroad. In addition to tourist destinations, the cards also feature scenes of domestic life, holidays, and humorous images, including a few dozen reproductions from Punch magazine." They can be viewed by clicking on the link provided above.
   To make the vast collection of postcards more accessible, Newberry has also made 26,000 additional ones available on the Internet Archive. They can be searched and viewed at Newberry Postcards and the terms of use are very generous. 

  Images from postcards can be found easily on the Internet and the market for historical ones is brisk. Provided below, however, are a few archival postcard collections.

VintagePostcards.ca

Quebec: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec
Approximately 20,000 have been digitized 

Calgary Public Library - Postcards From the Past

See McMaster University for "Postcards Provide Glimpse of Canada's Wintery Past."

For sunnier pictures see these two Florida collections:
Museum of Florida History
University of Florida: Postcard and Brochure Collections.

Source: 
  The Smithsonian provides a good Postcard History. 

The Bonus: And Now, About Those Leather Postcards!
   I learned while doing this that there were leather postcards which were often made from the hides of deer. I found this out at the website of the Wellington County Museum & Archives in Fergus, where they had a wall display of them. They also have a postcard collection. See: "Leather Postcard Frenzy."  Here is what the display looked like:

For more information see: "A Look at Leather Postcards," Bonnie Wilpon, Postcard History, Aug. 27, 2020. The image below is from her article as is the text that follows.

Starting in 1903, postcards made of leather were decorated by pyrography (literally “fire-writing”). Also known as pokerwork, it involved decorating the postcards using the tip of a sharp tool heated by fire. Surprisingly, it was a popular craft among ladies. Designs were burned into deerskin and color was often applied afterward. While the leather in newer postcards is often stiff, the leather of the pre-1915 era is very thin and soft.

About 1909, the post office banned the mailing of leather postcards because they were getting hung up in the new sorting machines. But dedicated collectors still sent them using envelopes. In later years when postal machinery became sturdier, the cards were again permitted in the mail. They can still be purchased in souvenir shops, especially in the American West.