Historical Chinese Postcard Project: 1896-1920

Item set

Type: Private collection See all item sets with this value; Archive See all item sets with this value
Title: Historical Chinese Postcard Project: 1896-1920
Description: Based on the private collection of scholar Régine Thiriez, this database primarily focuses on early postcards of China. It was created in collaboration with Gérald Foliot, scholar and System Administrator.
content: The virtual library contains:
⁃ About 500 digitized postcards (each one is scanned front and back)
⁃ List of identified postcards printers/publishers
⁃ List of used Chinese terms with pinyin transcription

Postcards shown in this virtual library were selected for their interest as iconographic and postcard history level, from Régine Thiriez's private collection of early postcards. The purpose was to complement Thiriez's long-lasting research on nineteenth century photography. The gathered postcards cover the early years of the medium from the onset ofphotographically illustrated postcards in 1896. The bulk of them go back to the late imperial period, that is, before 1911. A few later ones--until 1920 at the latest--were acquired for their individual historical value, or for the written message they carried.

The collection has no claim to be an accurate reflection of worldwide postcards with Chinese subject from the early 1900s. Like all collections, it is focused. For example, because of the collector's focus on early photography, postcards using pre-1900 photographs are over-represented in the sample. Nor do they reflect the current international market at large: for practical reasons acquisition was mostly limited to French and U.K. markets, although two French collections were also sources. Cost was another factor; collecting had started when prices were already on the rise. A significant number were selected because they were cheaper, which was often due to their poor condition. And while, happily, the resulting collection is reasonably coherent, this selection of about 500 postcards favours those with messages and postmarks, simply because they are more interesting.

This virtual library allows for selection by:
• themes
• places represented
• source images
• publishers
• photographers
• printers

Data attached to each postcard are organized at two levels:
• the postcard as an object. This is the physical appearance of each postcard taken individually: theme, text, i.e. what is really there, on both sides.
• the image (photograph, engraving, etc.) as iconographical source. The distinction is significant when a given source image was used for several postcards over time. It can reveal (1) that the illustration was popular, and (2) what transformations image and captioning/interpretation experienced over time.

Captions are copied as they now appear, including in the various typos and other errors.

Several publications were based on the collection (see “references” below).
Temporal Coverage: Nineteenth century (dates CE) See all item sets with this value; Twentieth century (dates CE) See all item sets with this value
Subject: Postcards See all item sets with this value; Portraits See all item sets with this value; Architecture See all item sets with this value; Artifacts (object genre) See all item sets with this value; Monuments See all item sets with this value; Street scenes See all item sets with this value; Townscapes (built environment) See all item sets with this value
Language: English; French; Chinese
References: Thiriez, Régine. "Imperial China in Postcards." Orientations 35, no. 5 (2004): 46-51.
location: Paris See all item sets with this value
url: http://postcard.vcea.net

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Hankow. – Rue de la ville chinoise. A chinese street.
This postcard prints a photograph by an unknown operator. It shows a crowded stoned-paved street in 'Hankow', one of the three cities on the Yangzi River with Wuchang and Hanyang, that form the metropolis we know as Wuhan. The western-style streetlamp on the right suggests the scene takes place in the foreign concession area. On the right, the caption reads: “Via Siberia 19 9br”, which means this postcard was shipped by a train that crossed the Russian frontier, and was mailed on 19th September. It should be noted that the stamp was attached on the front, a short-lived system that soon sent the stamp back on the address side. whereas usually stamps were stuck on back of postcards. The credit ‘Copyright Ch. Bernard, 'Hankow'' appears on a nice series of postcards from the early 1900s, but varied over time: ‘Ch.Bernard’, ‘Ch.Bernard – Pharmacie Centrale’, ‘Bernard et Monhouval’, and ‘Bernard & Monhonval’. ((je dois vérifier l'othographe)) Ch. Bernard appears to have had francophone origins, and owned the Pharmacie Centrale (Central Pharmacy) in the French concession of 'Hankow' [now part of Wuhan]. In addition to medical supplies, he stocked photographic material, and also produced a fair number of postcards on local subjects. His name is mentioned on page 263 in the following digitized document: “Who’s who: an alphabetical list of foreign residents and Hong employees in Shanghai, and outports, 1904” accessed July 21, 2014, http://www.bris.ac.uk/history/customs/ancestors/1904deskhonglist_3.pdf. A brief report on his activity is introduced in: Jialu Zhang, Baofang Hu, and Shanghai shi lishi bowuguan, Wuhan jiuying (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 2007), 26.