Berliner-Verkehr

Street level and elevated snapshots of road traffic in Weimar-era Berlin where a city culture of self-conscious modernity predominated. A conception of the city (der Stadt) evolved and expanded into the idea of the Metropolis, a place of previously unimaginable vastness powered by manufacturing, trade and commerce. With a propulsive transport network that linked every district or suburb to every other at the greatest possible velocity. For artists, film-makers, novelists, playwrights and photographers this was an intoxicating time offering a thrilling vision of the gargantuan Metropolis as a world where almost anything was possible.

These postcards feel different - rather than offering a composed view of city landmarks they take the viewer on to the pavements, sidewalks, pedestrian crossings and busy street intersections to experience the restless energy and vitality of a populace ever on the move, never pausing for breath because to do so might cost you a lucrative contract or a job promotion or a business opportunity or make you late for a theatre audition or a screen test or a crucial meeting with clients. Senses were on high alert to enable the last minute side step or body swerve for collision avoidance while finding gaps in the speeding traffic to navigate a safe passage to the other side.

In Weimar Berlin a new approach to photographing the city was explored by Sasha Stone, Mario von Bucovich and Willy Röhmer in which the camera was brought down to street level to mingle with the crowd and capture the scene on the move. Half of these postcards present the turmoil of the city from elevated viewpoints but the most radical  images are the work of photographers whose status is participatory. They share the pedestrians’ view of a bus looming into their field of vision and jump back to the kerb as a taxi races past, just inches away. Passers-by obscure the view, risk takers stand in the roadway, awaiting their chance while traffic swirls around them. In Paris and London, postcard photographers preferred to keep their distance and maintain a sense of detachment. This was very much a Berlin thing, to record and convey the spirit of a city in motion. Dating the postcards with any precision is difficult but the Modernist Telschow-Haus at Potsdamer- Platz was completed in 1929 and there are no signs of National Socialist emblems which would have proliferated after 1933 - mid Twenties to early Thirties is a plausible time frame.

Land’s End by Bus

Edward Bawden introduces this post with a characteristic drawing for Shell from a 1936 advertising campaign. Every day, roughly once an hour, there’s a bus from Penzance to Land’s End.  Often a double-decker, it follows a meandering route that takes it through the narrow back streets of Newlyn and onward through the villages of Paul, St. Buryan, Crows-An-Wra and Sennen. It’s an exciting ride as the width of the bus is often just inches less than the width of the road leading to much negotiation and occasional conflict with oncoming vehicles. At our destination there’s a minor empire of mid-level attractions including a petting zoo, an audio-visual experience, traditional craft studios, a shopping centre, and a hotel and restaurant complex. All owned and operated by Heritage Great Britain Plc. in a development of unremarkable buildings, regarded by many as “a blot on the landscape” - I’ve seen much worse elsewhere. From the bus stop in the car park the coastal footpaths can be reached and it’s quite possible to wander freely around while resisting the lure of the leisure attractions. 

The photos were taken on a sunny afternoon in early October - the coastal scenes look south across a boulder strewn landscape, reminiscent of Donegal, and north towards Sennen and Cape Cornwall.  The First & Last House differs only slightly from postcard views of 120 years ago. Next is the “World Famous” signpost (follow this link to see more) followed by an observation post from which to gaze on the eternity of the Atlantic Ocean. A small selection of postcards identifiable from their captions includes the Penwith House Temperance Hotel (1880), now converted into Penwith Studios, offering a choice of four luxuriously appointed rooms.

Since 2014 Cornwall has held official recognition as a distinct national minority within the UK that provides protection for its unique culture and language. From January 2026 the Cornish language has been elevated to Part III Status under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities. When I last posted about Cornwall, the county was served by 6 Conservative MPs. That all changed with the 2024 election when 4 Labour and 2 Lib-Dems were elected to Westminster. The county has just landed a devotion deal with the present government without being compelled to elect a Regional Mayor. Any potential improvements in governance are unlikely to meet with the approval of Newlyn fishermen, currently agitating for financial support with the rising price of diesel, as if they were the only ones affected.

 

Michelin in America

Marius Rossillon (1867-1946) created the rotund Michelin brand character, Bibendum in 1898, the same year that the French tyre manufacturer began selling its products in the USA. Rossillon was a professional cartoonist who signed his work with the pseudonym O’Galop. In 1911, O’Galop’s images of Bibendum would famously adorn the London HQ of Michelin, rendered in stained glass. These examples of advertising to an American audience come from 1920 by which time Bibendum had become more animated - more jovial, less sinister, no longer a deflated armadillo.  We are introduced to Bibendum as a man of the people, wrapping a protective arm around a snappily dressed customer, towering over a roadside billboard with a cigar between his lips or gazing benignly from on high as vehicles queue outside a Michelin workshop.  Elsewhere the product occupies centre stage while Bibendum, in miniature form, does a lot of gesturing and pointing. The overriding priority was that the public should accept Bibendum as an all-American and never mistake him for a cheese-eating surrender-monkey.  All Michelin advertising in 1920s America was produced in-house by locally recruited advertising managers. Some vintage postcards follow.  First is Bibendum en Famille on parade at the Nice Carnival followed by a view of the original Michelin factory in Clermont-Ferrand. After this is a hand-drawn card showing Bibendum en avion, taking part in an aerial targeting contest organised by the Michelin company in 1911 to support a campaign to prepare for future conflict. Last is a card and pamphlet featuring Michelin’s attempt to enter the railway market in 1933 with a diesel powered railcar that ran on rubber tyres.

Follow this link for a 2008 post about the splendid Michelin Building in London’s Fulham Road.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 116, Observation Car, San Antonio, Texas

The world’s first commercial electric railway opened in 1881 at Lichterfelde in Berlin.  This marked the end of the era of horse drawn street trolleys and over the following 25 years electrically powered streetcars dominated the American streetscene. When this image was recorded in the early 1900s, San Antonio was a city of 53,000 - today’s population is 1.5 million.  Streetcar routes were instrumental in shaping the growing city and land values soared along all new routes. Car number 211 is an Observation vehicle operating a special service - possibly a sightseeing excursion or a trip to a sporting event. Formalities of dress have been conscientiously followed, the staff being especially well turned out. Hats are universally worn in the full glare of a Texas sun. Other than the Steampunk splendour of the ornate vehicle, two details stand out. One being the casual hand that rests on the shoulder of a colleague, the other being the louche air of the couple on the extreme left who show no interest in boarding the vehicle. Streetcars came to be regarded as troublingly slow, a hindrance to other road users and haunted by ‘unsavoury’ passengers. Views that were constantly amplified by Big Oil in a nationwide campaign to switch to diesel powered buses. When streetcars were retired from the city streets in 1933, San Antonio was the largest city in the US to be dependent on buses, presumably cleansed of ‘unsavoury’ elements.

 

Bovril Charity Competion 1923

This contest was announced in the Christmas 1923 edition of “The Graphic” magazine - a publication similar in page size and contents to the “Illustrated London News”. The set of 16 Bovril posters in thumbnails comes from the cover of “The History of Bovril Advertising”. This was an undated in-house production (no ISBN) issued in about 1970. The book tells us that the aim of the contest, (which required a donation of £5, equivalent to £13.50 in today’s money to enter), was to rank the first 12 out of 16 examples in order of popularity. For prize winners, the sums were impressive - out of a total of £30,000 (£1.6 million today) prize money, £12,000 (£648,000 today) went to the overall winner. The equivalent of £3.8 million was donated to hospital charities.

Bovril’s viscous charms may hold little attraction for the modern consumer but its distinctive red labels on black jars can still be glimpsed on the lower supermarket shelves but the days when it was one of the most intensively advertised products will not be returning. It began life as a Victorian product in an era when anything new in the marketplace had to fight hard for attention.  Outdoor advertising was virtually unregulated and popular magazines catering to an increasingly literate public, swelled their revenues with pages and pages of implausible and outlandish claims that largely went unchallenged - consumer protection was not a thing. Relentless publicity campaigns put the Bovril name into the public eye at every opportunity with constant appeals to patriotic fervour while building a strong association with good health and physical strength. In 1893 its factory manager, S H Benson, left to start his own advertising agency with Bovril as his first client. It would go on to be one of the most successful British agencies of the 20th. century until it was acquired by WPP in 1989. Two examples of Victorian advertising are at the end of the post.

More on Bovril can be seen at Prevents That Sinking Feeling (2007) and British to the Backbone (2017).