Sunday, December 11, 2022

 

Wish You Were Here, from John T. McCutcheon

 

It's taken a long while for Wish You Were Here  to get around to a John T. McCutcheon postcard, but that's because he only did the one series (as far as I know) and they're on the scarce side. This card is number 30 in the series, highest number I recall seeing. The manufacturer was uncredited. Each card had a headline, "A Boy In..." and usually the last word was a season of the year, though not always. These cards were copyrighted in 1903, but may have been reprinted for awhile, because the ones I have are divided backs (1907 or later) and the postally used ones are all from 1908. Or maybe McCutcheon's cartoons were selected from his Bird Center series for the Chicago Tribune, which ran in 1903-04.

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"John McCutcheon's Book" published by Caxton Club, Chicago, 1948...
shows set of 32 "A Boy's Life" cards (of which above is one) in grey halftone over four pages, eight to a page. All are cartoons from the Chicago Record and then the Tribune when he moved over. Originals were in black and white and these are in color. Don't know if he did the color himself."Bird Center Etiquette" was a parlor game that came in a box. Same book shows all the cards displayed over a spread. I count 48. Each one is a character from the series and these may have been drawn specially for the game. I presume they were also in color.
Eddie Campbell
 
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