Robins

Robins are among my favourite birds, the European robin, that is.  I have not met an American robin even though I believe a few have made it to these shores when migrating.

The robins found in Britain are not very afraid of humans and can easily be tamed to take food from your hand.  They are less tame on mainland Europe where they were once hunted, but even there they will turn up to check for unexpected delicacies while you are gardening.

These cards are from France, Germany, Russia and the Netherlands.

Holidays

I have, some may have noticed, been away. Part of it was holidays when I did a lot of this:

...But in a place more like this:

The weather was wonderful and I feel very much the better for it.

The girl reading, apparently propped up against a bicycle (though I suspect some PhotoShopping), comes from Russia, the Mediterranean doorway comes from the Netherlands.

Spring flowers

The daffodils are almost finished and we have tulips!  I always love this time of year, when the days become longer and the birds are building their nests.  I just wish they wouldn't drop their nest-building materials on my balcony.

And where else would this card be sent from but The Netherlands!  With my past experience, it could have come from anywhere but in fact it did indeed come from The Netherlands.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's, The Best Hearts are Crunchy. Please visit her and join in.

Easter chick

I don't believe this really is an Easter card, but I love it.  It comes from The Netherlands and on the back says it was drawn by "Ilse", a primary school pupil, for something called "Action Schoolyard".

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's, The Best Hearts are Crunchy.  Do visit her and join in.

A is for Amersfoort

Medieval buildings have always been fascinating for me.  I can almost feel the history they contain and I imagine what life must have been like in those days long ago.  The Koppelpoort in Amersfoort is one I'd love to visit and because it's not so very far away, maybe I will one day.

Amersfoort is a very old city in the Netherlands just over 750 years old.  The Kloppelpoort is part of the second city wall built in the 14th century when the city outgrew the original city walls.

The Kloppelpoort is both a land and water gate which was opened each morning and closed each evening.  Inside the building is a huge wooden wheel, a treadmill, which had to be turned to open or close the gate. At least twelve people had to be found to walk around it, dangerous work because when the gate was lowered the wheel accelerated.  It often resulted in broken limbs or worse.

This is my first ever attempt at A-Z blogging.  After quite a long pause, I just hope I can keep up the pace. :)

Reading women

I seem to have given the impression that I collect postcards of women or girls reading because just after Eva's comment the other day (Eva of Mail Adventures), I received this postcard with 54 different pictures of women reading!  I've scanned it at a relatively high resolution so that if you click on the image you should be able to see better.

Of course they aren't identified on the back so now starts the challenge of working out who they all are.  For my own reference purposes I've allocated them A-F for rows and 1-9 columns.

Row A
1. Marie Adelaide of France by Jean-Etienne Liotard
2. In Slaap Gevallen by Kik Zeiler, 1948
3. An Interlude by William Sergeant Kendall, 1907
4. De gezusters Arntzenius ('lezende zusjes') or The Arntzenius sisters (reading sisters) - WB Tholen, 1895
5. The Magdalen Reading by Rogier van der Weyden, about 1435
6. Helene Vary by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 1889
7. Reading a Story by James Tissot, 1878
8. Alice by George Dunlop Leslie, 1879
9. The Maid With the Golden Hair by Frederick Lord Leighton

Row B
1. Virgin and Child, by William Dyce
2. Gare St Lazare, by Edouard Manet 1873
3. From Ot and Sien, Cornelis Jetses 1873-1955
4. The Reader Crowned with Flowers, or Virgil's Muse, by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot 1845
5. Girl Reading, Jean-Baptiste Camille-Corot, 1850/1855
6. Mrs. Duffee Seated on a Striped Sofa, Reading, by Mary Cassatt, 1876
7. Ballet Class, the Dance Hall [detail] by Edgar Dégas, 1880
8. Reading by Lamplight, by George Clausen, 1909
9. The Novel Reader, by Vincent van Gogh, 1888

Row C
1. Woman by a Goldfish Tank, by Lovis Corinth, 1911
2. La Liseuse [The Reader], by Alfred Emile Stevens, about 1860
3. Meditation: Madame Monet on a Couch, by Claude Monet, 1871
4. Madonna mit den Erdbeeren [Madonna with Strawberries, by "The Upper Rhenish Master", c. 1425.
5. St Catherine, by "The master of the Half length", 1830s
6. Lezende Vrouw[Reading Woman], by Matthieu Wiegman, 1925
7. Intérieure, by Edgar Fernhout, 1951
8. Mary Reading, by Lorenzo Costa, c. 1515
9. Interior with poppies and reading woman (Lizzy Hohlenberg), by Anna Ancher, 1905

Row D
1. The Novel: A Lady in a Garden Reading a Book, Frank Dicey,
2. Home Devotion by Adolf Hölzel
3. L'Edition de Luxe, by Lilian Westcott Hale, 1910
4.Young Girl Reading by Gustav Adolph Hennig, 1828
5.The Little Convalescent by Eastman Johnson, 1872-1880
6. Leisure, by William W Churchill, 1910
7. Young Woman Reading, by Mary Cassatt, 1876
8. The Reading Lesson, Auguste Toulmouche
9. Girl Reading, by Edmund Tarbell, 1909

Row E
1. Woman Reading by Léon Kamir Kaufman, 1921
2. Woman Reading by Candlelight by Peter Ilsted, 1908
3. A Quiet Read in a Chinoiserie Interior, by Georges Croegaert, 1888
4. ?
5. Woman reading, by J Paul Allinson, 1940
6. Repose, by Jacques Cancaret
7. Girl with a Book by William Merritt Chase, 1902
8. La Lettre by Henry Lerolle
9. The Browning Readers by William Rothenstein, 1900

Row F
1. Elegant Woman in Library by Edouard Gelhay
2. La lecture by Henri Fantin-Latour
3. Portrait of Katie Lewis by by Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, 1886
4. Val d'Arconville by Theodore Robinson, 1888
5. Mademoiselle Guillaumin Reading by Armand Guillaumin, 1907
6. Woman Reading by a Window by David Alison
7. Young Woman Reading a Letter by Jean Raoux, 1717-1719
8. Woman Reading on Subway by Silvina Resnik
9. At The Window by Hans Olaf Heyerdahl, 1881

All but one, I think, I've found!  Some were easy, some were really difficult.

Madonna and Child

Although this card from the Netherlands did have art stamps on it, I had to go to France to find the first Madonna and Child stamp.

It commemorates the 500 years since Rafael painted it in 1512/13. The original hangs in the museum in Dresden.

The Royal Mail quite frequently uses art on stamps, particularly around Christmas time.  I have a set of PHQ (postal headquarters) stamp cards from 1991 which are taken from a 14th century manuscript kept in the Bodleian Library in Oxford.

These are just two of the set.  I love the colour and form, but if you look closely at the faces, they do look a little odd though possibly more "real". I prefer them to some more recent versions.

As I said, the original postcard did have art stamps on it too, commemorating Rembrandt
:

And another by Vermeer, that almost everyone will recognise thanks to the recent film, Girl with a Pearl Earring.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Book versus doll

A doll lies abandoned on the floor while the little girl reads her book.  It's a new book apparently because the title of the picture, a watercolour by George Goodwin Kilburne, is "The New Book".  The date on it is 1870.

I have discovered in my efforts t find out more about this painting, that Wikipedia has a whole category called "Paintings of sitting girls reading indoors".  I already have a few of them...  Are there categories for reading out of doors, women, men, I wonder?  I have a few of those too...

The postcard was sent to me from the Netherlands although the artist is British.

Christmas postcards and stamps

I bought several sets of these Royal Mail PHQ Christmas postcards a few years ago and now I'm down to one remaining set.  I'll use them up over the nest few weeks but I'll be sorry to see them go.  They show the images for the 1983 Christmas stamps:

12½p Christmas Post (pillar-box),
16p The Three Kings (chimneys )
20½ World at Peace (a dove and a blackbird)
28p Light of Christmas (street lamp)
31p Christmas Dove (topiary)

As I was looking up what the images represented, I discovered that someone is selling them on Zazzle. Surely that's a copyright issue?

That aside, I found plenty of other bird stamps:

Great Egret from Belarus

Long-eared owl on Belgian stamp

From the Netherlands 

Siberian Crane on stamp from Russia

and a cute little owl from Switzerland.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Kinderdijk

One of the very well known and easily recognisable UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Netherlands.  I was lucky enough to travel along the canal a long time ago.  At that time I didn't realise its significance but I do remember remarking on the number of windmills along its length.

A red 2CV

Just like the one I used to drive, a Citroen 2CV, although of course the steering wheel would have been on the other side on mine.  It was a wonderful car though possibly not so great in the snow.  I was sad when my sons grew too big to fit comfortably in the back.

Although the car originates in France, the postcard originated in the Netherlands.

Lezen

Lezen - to read in Dutch, and yes, the card came to me from the Netherlands.  It obviously is promoting reading.  The card was sold in aid of an organisation called Kinderpostzegels which runs projects to develop and protect vulnerable children.

Their motto is "voor kinderen, door kinderen" or "for children by children".  Each year children sell stamps and cards to raise money for the organisation.

Also from the Netherlands cme this card:

I used to love miniature books as a child, and still feel drawn to collect them.

Letters, postcards and postboxes

In 2002 the Royal Mail issued a series of stamps with the title "Pillar to Post" to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the first pillar box.  I thought I had  the whole series of 5 as PHQ cards but the ones above are the only ones I can lay my hands on today.

Apart from these I found several from the Netherlands:

I believe there were several designs of the Postcrossing stamp, and I'm fairly sure I have had others but they must be filed in the same place as my pillar box stamp cards.

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, run by Viridian. Click on the button to visit and discover more.

Kitchens

The kitchen is where I spend a lot of time in the run-up to Christmas so it seems like a good idea to show a couple of the cards I've received recently.

The first is the kitchen in a castle, Kasteel Twickel, in Delden in the Netherlands; the second comes from Russia but is unidentified.  I'd love to have a kitchen full of copper utensils and wooden tables but I wouldn't particularly like the work involved in keeping it all looking nice.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog, The Best Hearts are Crunchy.  Just click on the button to visit and join in.

With her nose in a book

Today is International Day of the Girl so I've chosen this Dutch reproduction of an old postcard of a girl in a corner, reading, surrounded by books.  The title on the back is given in Dutch as "Met de neus in de boeken" or "With her nose in a book", photographer unknown.

I think that's a blissful place to be and I could probably be found in a very similar position, lost to the world, many times when I was that age. Sadly many girls in the world today don't have that opportunity.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog, The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Postal services

Marjaliisa Pitkäranta (1941-2003) was a prolific Finnish artist and illustrator and her works include about 2000 postcards.  The one above of a Finnish post office, had this lovely stmap on it.

Another I found on a different card would have been appropriate too:

And while I was on a roll, I also found one from the Netherlands and another from the Czech Republic:

The text on the Czech card translates (according to Google) as, "Get your own stamps".

This is a post for Sunday Stamps, now hosted by Violet Sky at "See it on a Postcard!"

Bookmarks

I was so pleased to receive this postcard from the Netherlands just a few days ago.  The sender thought it would be ideal for me because I list reading as one of my main interests but it was even more apt than she could have known.  I came to Postcrossing through Bookcrossing where people very often used to enclose a postcard with a book that was being "crossed".  In the days before Postcrossing, postcard swaps were often arranged so I have a good number of postcards which have been used as bookmarks.

From time to time I've found postcards in second hand books I've bought and I've even had a found bookmark-postcard sent to me from a blogger friend.  I wrote a separate post about that great find.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Bring forth May flowers

I was looking for flowery postcards for this Postcard Friendship Friday entry and discovered quite a number of them and the majority, like this one, from the Netherlands.  I don't list flowers among my preferences but in this case at least it probably comes under the art banner.

It's once of Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies, the Lilac Fairy.  It was a good choice by the sender because I've always loved lilac.  I had a constant battle with my father during May because he believed having lilac indoors would bring bad luck but as soon as I had my own garden with a lilac tree I could have that wonderful scent around my home as much as I liked. He was not alone in that belief though some people restrict the ban to white lilac.

If you'd like to see more Flower Fairies, do visit Kathy Matthews at Oregon Gifts of Comfort and Joy.  She completed the A-Z Challenge last month using all Cicely Mary Barker's Flower Fairies, though her letter L was lily of the valley.

I'll leave you with a couple of verses of Albert Noyes' poem "The Barrel Organ".  There are a good many more verses but I remember these from having to learn them at school when I was very young.  I don't know which came into my life first, the poem or the lilac tree.

Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer's wonderland;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn't far from London!)

The cherry-trees are seas of bloom and soft perfume and sweet perfume,
The cherry-trees are seas of bloom (and oh, so near to London!)
And there they say, when dawn is high and all the world's a blaze of sky
The cuckoo, though he's very shy, will sing a song for London.

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday hosted on Beth Niquette's blog, The Best Hearts are Crunchy.

Esbjörn in the armchair

Carl Larsson was a Swedish artist and interior designer.  He married a fellow artist they went on to have 8 children, many of whom featured in his paintings.  Esbjörn, born in 1900, was his youngest and this picture shows him in an armchair.  It is a watercolour dated 1912 and can be found in the National Museum in Stockholm.

The card was sent to me from the Netherlands.

World Book Day

With perfect timing, this card arrived from the Netherlands today, World Book Day.  Before everyone starts shouting at me, I know that most of the world celebrates World Book Day on 23 April, but in the UK and Ireland we celebrate on the first Thursday in March, that is today.  The reason for this is to avoid the school holidays.

The image is an untitled work by Teun Hocks.