King (Queen actually) of the Castle

Christmas cards from the past

I rediscovered several old postcards and Christmas greeting cards languishing in the bottom drawer a few days ago. When I took them out I was dismayed to see how they are deteriorating - the paper is 'foxed' and the ink fading. So my task has been to mount them properly into an album on acid free materials and see if we can get them to last another 100 years.

They are all family cards, some sent to my Mother and Aunt when they were little, and some sent to my Grandmother when she was in her teens, and some were my Great Grandparents!

The oldest dated one is 1909, but the ones sent to my Great Grandparents are probably older than that. My Mother gave them all to me when I was a child. I was making a scrapbook which was a favourite occupation in those days and they all got stuck in the book, probably using flour and water glue. That would have been around 56 years ago. Several years ago I carefully prised them out of the old scrapbook, they were a little worse for wear but not too bad considering the treatment they have had.

If you click on the first photo you will see one sent to my Mother - the inscription reads - 'To little Muriel with best love from little Willie'. Unfortunately no one knows who little Willie is! No date on it, but would be about 1919.