For Valentine’s Day, I’m sharing this unique panoramic postcard by the famous publisher J Valentine & Sons.
J Valentine & Sons was a prominent postcard publisher based in Dundee, Scotland. Founded in 1851 by James Valentine, the company initially focused on photography and printing before venturing into the postcard business in the late 19th century.
This instalment of the series includes four cards from my collection. The featured postcard is unposted but the others were mailed in the late 50s and early 60s.
Panorama Postcard
This is the only panoramic postcard of Castell Coch in my collection. I was very excited at first but quickly realised the photo is just a crop of an existing card. It’s still a very unique and interesting card and provides a bit more space to write a message.
The cinematic widescreen format became popular in the early 1950s when several new technologies were developed. Some very well known films were shown in the 50s and 60s using this aspect ratio. Perhaps the popularity of these experiences inspired postcard publishers to reproduce it.
The Original Photo
The panoramic image was cropped from this photo. Both postcards share the same identifying code, “W5681”. Valentine’s used a numbering system so their cards are easy to date. This postcard was registered in 1954.
I have a few versions of this card from 1957 to 1963.
Valentine’s Post Cards
I shared some photos from the Valentine Collection in a recent post and another postcard on Tongwynlais.com if you’d like to read more.
“Enveloped sets of 6 to12 postcards of towns and areas to be sold as souvenir sets. The postcards were chosen by Valentine, from their views of the places, and sold in paper envelope decoratively printed and with precut window revealing the picture on the top postcard.”
Image courtesy of the University of St Andrews Libraries and Museums
Sources
- James Valentine Photographic Collection – University of St Andrews
- The Tongwynlais.com Collection
