Feb 4th, 2016: Linen Postcards

[xoxoxoBruce]

In 1895, 18 year old Curt Teich(Tike) had row with his father and left Germany in a snit. Actually he left in a boat which landed in New York, then a train to Chicago. In 1898 he started a printing company, the same year the US post office set the postcard rate at 1 cent, and letters at 2 cents. This created a huge market for postcards, as everyone knows Americans are cheap.
The big dog was the Detroit Photographic Co., who used costly stone-lithography. Teich used faster cheaper offset lithography, but when the big dog tanked in 1924 the field was wide open. Then Teich discovered an embossed paper resembling canvas, and used less ink. They were commonly refered to as linen postcards.



Teich’s secret weapon was one of their sales agents, G.I. Pitchford, who’s territory was the west coast from Canada to Mexico, plus Idaho, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Pitchford was also an avid amateur photographer who supplied the company with a steady supply of photographs complete with instructions on how to color them. Teich’s most famous card was a Santa Fe Super Chief train in a California orange grove, with snow-capped peaks in the background. Pitchford created that scene by gluing pieces of seven photographs together.



But riding high, Teich failed to notice smaller companies who had switched to Kodachrome color transparencies early, take control of the postcard business once dominated by Teich. Then everybody got a camera and the whole postcard business faded.

Hey, I know, postcards with a blank spot to glue your picture in, selfie cards! We'll make a fortune!
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