One of the many collectible categories of paper ephemera is anthropomorphics. Commonly known as personification, this term refers to attributing human characteristics to non-human things, such as animals, gods, or even the weather. This was very popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and continues to be used frequently in political cartoons today. Almost everyone recognizes the anthropomorphic elephant and donkey of the Republicans and Democrats. Here are a few fun examples, but there are a lot more where these came from.
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| This is a fairly rare and unusual postcard. I believe there were 4 or 5 in this series, with different somewhat creepy personified ornaments. |
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| Victorian trade cards frequently used anthropomorphic characters. |
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| Not sure what a dapper mouse has to do with thread, but these cards rarely had much to do with the product they advertised. |
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ReplyDeleteAre you trying to draw me into the postcard world?
;-)
Haha, those are Victorian trade cards used to advertise products and businesses. I think you could get into a lot more trouble with those than you could with postcards actually!
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