More Greeting Postcards - Postcards With Sayings

These are the only Hallmark greeting cards with sayings in my collection.

"Today means boundless and inexhaustible eternity. Months and years and all periods of time are concepts of men, who gauge everything by number; but the true name of eternity is Today."

- Philo

"For great is his love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever. Praise the LORD"

- Psalm 117:1-2 NIV

"The Love which moves the sun and the other stars."
(L'amor che muove il sole e l'altre stelle.)
Canto XXXIII, line 145 (last line)

- Dante Alighieri

I couldn't find to whom I can quote the sayings on these cards.

Postcard 4: "Imagination creates a dream. Faith turns it into a reality."

Postcard 5: "Every day in the Lord is a day of new beginnings."

Modern Greeting Postcards - Andrew Brownsword Postcard Collection

These were also among my first postcards. It was easier for me to research who Andrew Brownsword is and about the collection. However, I found no description about the bears nor the Forever Friends.

Born Andrew Douglas Brownsword, he started the Andrew Brownsword Collection, a publishing business founded in Bath in 1971. Brownsword started by selling greeting cards, before developing the Forever Friends teddy bear genre with artist Deborah Jones in Reading, Berkshire in the early 1980s:

"I wanted to develop a teddy bear that appealed to adults as well as children. I based Forever Friends specifically on the teddy bear that Sebastian Flyte carried around in Brideshead Revisited. It became the bear found in the attic."

The first Forever Friends bears were available in the shops in February 1987. The Andrew Brownsword Collection were later acquired by Hallmark Cards in 1994.

Forever Friends Postcard 1

Forever Friends Postcard 2

SOURCES:
Andrew Brownsword Wikipedia Entry
Forever Friends Homepage

Modern Greeting Postcards - Freechese Company

My first postcards were actually these greetings cards, which I bought in 1997. Unfortunately I haven't seen other cards being sold nor stores that still sell them this past few years.

At the back of the postcard was the "supposedly" name of the manufacturer of the postcard, Freecheese and Company. I had hard time gathering information about the said company because Google search does not give relevant results.

Free Cheese & Company Logo

Then I decided to check who Alex (signature on the postcards) is. And at last I found the name of the company that produced the postcards and about the characters on the postcards.

The Alex Company (Biembi's greeting cards) trio was born in 1985, from the pencil of Alex Rinesch, when Free, all big ears and large feet mouse, falls onto Earth from his Cheese Planet. Alone, penniless and seeking for a flat to share, the rebel mouse Free soon meets the sleepy cat Sugar and elephant Little Bo. They are the main characters of a wacky but harmonious universe. The trio plays, studies, works, travels, socializes, falls in love, gets angry…in a word it experiences true emotions.

Surpise! from Free

Happy Birthday! From Free

Embosed Greeting Postcards

Postcards can be grouped in two very broad categories: view cards and greeting cards. Greeting cards would include holiday postcards (Christmas, Easter, New Year), birthday cards, portraits of persons, comedy cards, cards with sayings, etc. However, some greetings such as the "Labor Day" cards, are considered scarce.

Early greeting cards are some of the most beautiful cards every printed. Publishers competing for sales, printed cards using intricate embossing techniques, high caliber art work, superior inks, expensive lithographic processes and even novelty additions such as glitter, ribbons, silk and feathers.

Used Birthday Greetings Card
dated January 17, 1914

in Kapampangan (Filipino Language)

Used Greetings Card (linen)
dated December 15, 1914

in Spanish
GA Novelty Art Series no. 1256

G. A. Novelty Co. (1908-1910)
New York, NY
A publisher of simple greeting and unique novelty postcards. They were manufactured in Germany.

Used Greetings Card
dated January 17, 1914
in Spanish

Raphael Tuck and Sons Postcards

Ever since I started collecting postcards, I have included postcard paintings in my must-haves. When I saw Postcard 9528: Harry Payne's Nearly at the Top of the Hill in an antique shop, I immediately purchased it. Another reason I purchased the card is its size. It is smaller than any of my other cards, measuring only 5.5" by 3.5". I also took the challenge of gathering information about the painter, Harry Payne, the manufacturer, Raphael Tuck and Sons Ltd, and what an oilette might be.
I first checked Wikipedia to find out who Harry Payne was. Unfortunately the site does not have any entry for the Harry Payne I am looking. A more thorough search on the internet only returned the following result (no other information found):

Henry Payne (1858-1927) is an artist from Catford. Harry was a prolific military artist. He also painted several series of Oilette postcards Raphael Tuck.

Wikipedia, however, does have a sentence long description of what an oilette is.

Oilette - A trade name used by Raphael Tuck to describe postcards reproduced from original paintings.

Postcard 9390: Harry Payne's The Road Past the Farm

Postcard 9528: Harry Payne's The Pond in the Lane

Postcard 9528: Harry Payne's Nearly at the Top of the Hill

I found information about the "Raphael Tuck and Sons Ltd" company from several sites, which I have summarized below:

Tuck's Post Card

Raphael Tuck was born August 7, 1821 in Koschmin, a small village in Eastern Prussia (now Poland) and arrived in England with his wife, Ernestine Lissner, and seven children in 1865. In 1866 Raphael and Ernestine opened a small shop where they sold prints and frames. They also started publishing lithographs chromolithographs and all kind of printed novelties.

Registered Trademark

In 1880 the Company registered the trademark with the “Easel and Palette” along with the inscription “The World Art Service.” From 1881 on the Company name was “Raphael Tuck and Sons." In 1893 Queen Victoria granted the Company her “Warrant of Appointment” in recognition of the publishing of her letter to the nation on the death of the Duke of Clarence. Every reigning head would later honor the Company at least one time. That’s why their products are best dated by the reigning monarch they mentioned on most of their printing.

Royal Warrant of Appointment

Tuck’s Oilette cards were of a very high quality, looking like the real oil painting. He issued his first picture post card in 1894, with a small picture of Mount Snowdon in the upper left corner. The first series of numbered postcards was printed in 1898 which was a set of 12 lithographed vignette views of London, numbered 1 to 12 with the "Tower of London" being postcard #1.
On December 29, 1940 London was bombed and the Raphael House completely destroyed. After Desmond Tuck retired in 1959 the Company changed hands several times. They still produced high quality printing, but missed the ‘magic’.

SOURCES:Henry Payne, Artist
Oilette Wikipedia Entry