Today, anyone can create a postcard and have it mass-produced. Just take a photograph with your digital camera and go to a printer or one of many internet postcard printing sites, order 200 postcards, and – viola! – you have created a small piece of history that you can mail or sell as a postcard. However, have you thought about how postcards were made in the early 1900s before cameras were so popular and developing photographs so easy?
Most early postcards were actually prints made from engravings. The Giles County Historical Society has five examples early copper engravings used to create postcards of the buildings of Pearisburg on display. These copper engravings, loaned by the McComas Chapter of the United Daughters of the Confederacy, were made by E. S. Dennis in 1907. (Shown is the old Pearisburg Presbyterian Church and Manse)
By looking very closely at the resulting postcards, one can see that the grays of the picture are made with tiny black dots, similar to today’s digital pixels, that are closer together to create dark grays and farther apart to create light grays. This would indicate that the process used to create the copper engravings was half-tone engraving, a rather complex chemical process of transferring the photograph to the copper block through a glass screen and etching the image on the copper. Once complete, the copper plate is then covered with ink and wiped clean with the ink being forced into the etching crevices. A press is used to force the paper into the crevices to create the image. When the paper is peeled from the press, a postcard is born.
Postcards are invaluable for people looking for information about a place. Most every small community had postcards made of the town or special events like parades, homecomings, or even bad storms. The postcards can tell a historian where buildings and streets used to be and how the town used to look. For those studying history or revitalizing a community, postcards provide a public record of a time now lost.
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