Figure 1.--This Australian Christmas photoback postcard shows Melbourne boy Henry Anderson. Note the snowy designs dspite the fact that December is a summer month. The portrait is indated. We would guess it was taken about 1910. There is a stamp box. Unfortunately we have few examples and has far as we can find, the Australian stamp boxes have not been dated. Click on the image to to see the message in the back and the stamp box.

The postcard was invented in Europe, probably in Austria during the late-19th century. Postcards soon spread around the world. We believe that Australian postcsards basiclly followed the adoption and trends in Britain. Postcards appeared in the late-19th century, at first we believe in Austria. An industry was slow to develop, primarily because government post offices tried to control the trade. Two developments cause the postcard to take off at the turn-of the 20th century. One was the perfection of lithographic technologies capable of prfoducing full color images. Theis led to a commercial postcard industry. Until World War I, Germany dominted the industry. The other development was the Kodak Brownie in America (1900). This made the fmily sdbapshot a bith easy and reklatively in expensive. Kodak hit on the idea of printing a postcard back on the back of the prints making it an easy way to mail copies to family and friends, While begun in America, these postcard back prints soon became common in Britain and Europe and soon became available in Australia as well. We see both family snaphots and studio portraits. These cards often have stamp boxes which can be useful in dating the photo cards. This is difficult with Australian photocards because we have so few exmples.

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Crerated: February 6, 2002
Last updated: 7:38 PM 7/21/2020