Vintage 1910 Divided Back Era Postcard

Curteich Postcard #W-44759 = 1910’s

In Hybrid TINTED HALFTONE

 

Postcard Topic

 

McKinley Monument

In City Park

Reading, Pennsylvania

 

President William McKinley Memorial,

City Park, Reading, Pennsylvania, dedicated 1905,

Edward Ludwig Albert Pausch, sculptor.

William McKinley was the 25th President of the United States

 

Published by

 

F. W. Woolworth Co.   1878-1997

New York, NY

Frank Winfield Woolworth (1852-1919) opened his first retail store in Utica, NY in 1878. He became a publisher and major retailer of postcards in 1912. These cards were sold from the company’s ever-expanding chain of Five & Dime stores both in America and abroad. They had designed and published many of their own Christmas cards since 1879. As other publishers were forced to compete with their bargain prices the quality of postcards was forced downward. Many publishers blamed Woolworth for destroying the postcard craze by dumping cards on the market at prices set below profit margin.

Printed by

C.T. Photochrom (full color)

Using a black and white photo with a four-color process, Curt Teich colorized photos. Most of the cards printed with this new process were reprints of cards the Teich Company had produced in other styles. Series W contract cards were for the F.W. Woolworth Company. There are a few hundred cards ordered by the Woolworth Company that begin with a W instead of the more typical A or R.

Full-color images are created on the printing press by applying separate layers of the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks. Thousands of colors can be reproduced by overlapping these CMYK colors in various concentrations. Applied as tiny dots on the paper (or other substrate), the four CMYK colors combine to create the visual effect we know as full color printing.

Curt Teich Co. 1898-1978
Chicago, Illinois

 

Curt Teich was already working as a lithographer in Lobenstein, Germany when he emigrated to Chicago in 1895. He would start his own firm in 1898 concentrating on newspaper and magazine printing. While he was an early publisher of postcards, he did not begin printing them in number himself until 1908.

By the 1920’s he was producing so many postcards with borders that they became recognized as a type dubbed White Border Cards. Curt Teich was an early pioneer of the offset printing process having started using offset presses in 1907.

His innovations in this printing technique directly led to the production of what we now call Linens by the early 1930’s. While they produced many cards during World War Two, they also aided the war effort by printing many military maps.

Although Curt Teich eventually turned management of the firm over to his son, he remained active in company operations throughout its history. After his death in 1974 the family business was sold to Regensteiner Publishers who continued to print cards at the Chicago plant until 1978. Afterwards the rights to the company name and processes were sold to the Irish firm John Hinde Ltd. Their California subsidiary now prints cards under the name John Hinde Curteich, Inc.

Condition

 

Fair

POSTED – USED

 

Corners & edges show minimal wear.

No creases, tears, smudges, smears, stains, pinholes, or mold.

                                                                                           

Description

 

Standard Size: 5 ½” X 3 ½” / 14cm X 8.9cm

Print Date: Curteich Postcard #W-44759 = 1910’s

Postcard Era: Early Divided Back Era (1907-1914)

Printing Type: hybrid TINTED HALFTONE Printing Process

 

hybrid TINTED HALFTONE

Printing in color was found by creating a

hybrid TINTED HALFTONE

that would use a single photographic halftone in the same way as the linear key drawing that held the dots of a chromolithograph together, but here the color pallet would be reduced to a few hand drawn tints. Since these color plates were created by hand, there were many variations to how these postcards look.

 

Early Divided Back Era (1907-1914)

 

Postcards with a divided back were permitted in the U.S. beginning on March 1, 1907.  (Britain had already pioneered this in 1902.)  The address was to be written on the right side; the left side was for writing messages.  Many millions of cards were published in this era -- it was the golden age of postcards.  Up to this point, most postcards were printed in Germany, which was far ahead of the United States in the use of lithographic processes.  With the advent of World War I, the supply of postcards for American consumption switched from Germany to England and the United States itself.