BY VERONICA STIENBURG, ARCHIVIST
The Archives of the Sisters of Providence of St. Vincent de Paul collects postcards as well as photographs. One of my favourite things in the postcard collection are the hand-tinted post cards. Hand tinted postcards became popular at the end of the 19th century and continued to be popular until the late 1920s. The height of their popularity seems to have been around 1910, which matches with many of the postmarks on the postcards in our collection.
The postcards were printed in monochrome, and then a colourist would hand paint the postcards; therefore, each postcard is slightly different. Sometimes the colours are quite different and sometimes it’s really just the clouds that are different. Here are two local examples of hand tinted postcards – for each we have an uncoloured postcard and several examples of hand tinted versions.
St. Mary’s Cathedral, Kingston
