POSTCARDS FROM THE PAST

1969 Photochrome Era Postcard

In Glossy Finish

TOPIC

YAZOO RIVER Bascule BRIDGE

Yazoo City, Mississippi

“Completed in 1937 and apparently replaced in 1988”

Print Year

Curteich No. 9DK-812 = 1969

Era

Photochrome Era (1939-ongoing)

“Chrome” postcards began to dominate the scene soon after the Union Oil Company placed them in its western service stations in 1939.  Mike Roberts pioneered his “WESCO” cards soon after World War II.  Three-dimensional postcards also appeared in this era.  By 1960s, the standard size of cards had grown to 4 x 6 inches.

Photochromes are not real photos but rather, printed cards done by a photochrome process.  To distinguish a printed postcard from a real photo postcard, examine it under a magnifying glass and you will see the dot pattern that is characteristic of printed cards.

Printer

Curteichcolor ®

3-D Natural Color Reproduction

(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.

Publisher

Published by

Deep South Specialties, Inc.

Distributor

Distributed by

Deep South Specialties, Inc.

Jackson, Mississippi

1952 through 1985

Major publisher and distributor of picture postcards of the Southern states of Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

In 1952, Henry Wyatt Clowe (1916-2006), owner and operator of a packaging equipment and material business in Jackson, heard of a new printing method that produced shiny photographic images on postcards. Seeing a new business opportunity, he hired a photographer to produce images of familiar Gulf Coast scenes and other Mississippi and Alabama landmarks. For the next thirty-three years, Clowe printed the postcards under the name Deep South Specialties, Incorporated, and sold them in dime stores and motel lobbies across Mississippi. In 1982, Clowe estimated that he had sold millions of postcards during the previous three decades.

Clowe continued to run his packaging equipment business until his retirement in 2004. He passed away on October 26, 2006.

Size

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

Printing Technique

Photochrome 1939-

 4-Color Process printing

Full-color images are created on the printing press by applying separate layers of the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black inks (CYMK). Photochrome cards were both more realistic looking and less expensive. Thousands of colors can be reproduced by overlapping these CMYK colors in various concentrations. Applied as tiny dots on the paper the four CMYK colors combine to create the visual effect we know as full color printing.

CONDITION

Unused /Unposted

Corners and edges in very good condition.

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