Lot 169: An Art Nouveau Postcard Album Containing a Collection of Early 20th-Century Postcards
An antique postcard album featuring a cloth-bound hardcover with an embossed Art Nouveau design. The cover decoration includes purple irises and a stylized sailboat set within a silver-tone vignette, with the word Album in decorative script. The interior contains a collection of early 20th-century postcards housed in paper pages with decorative printed borders and corner slits. Notable contents include a portrait of the British actress Lilian Braithwaite and a First World War-era Red Cross patriotic postcard titled Devotedness, depicting a nurse with captions in French, English, and Russian, signed in the print by Henry Pare. Other cards include a view of the Vanderbilt Hotel in New York, British topographical scenes such as Songs of Devon and The Zig-Zag Path, and various maritime, equestrian, and landscape views.
Condition report:
The cloth binding shows significant wear, including a large area of surface loss and abrasion to the upper right corner of the front cover. The edges and corners are frayed with some exposed board, and the cloth exhibits general fading and staining. An auction lot sticker is present on the front cover. Internally, the paper pages are toned and brittle, with occasional small tears around the mounting slits. The postcards are generally in good condition with minor corner wear consistent with album storage.
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