Postcrossing Blog

The writing prompts invite postcrossers to write about a different topic on their postcards’ messages every month. These are just suggestions though — if you already know what you want to write about, or the recipient gives you some pointers, that’s great too!

This month, we suggest looking at an interesting part of our cultural inheritance: crafts!

We all know that each country or perhaps even a particular region or town has its own special form of handmade crafts that they’re famous for. Some are even classified as Intangible Cultural Heritage by UNESCO, such as the hand-making of washi paper in Japan or the bobbin lace-making in Slovenia. So what about your own region or country? What crafts do people do there?

If I had to pick something to represent the southernmost region of Portugal, I’d probably choose palm weaving. We have lots of palm trees around here, and for centuries their leaves have been dried and weaved intricately to create a variety of products — like baskets, bags, chairs or brushes. They’re well-made, last a very long time, and look beautiful too!

So what are the handicrafts that your region is known for? Share them with others on the postcards you write this month!

About a month ago, we’ve enlisted the help of the Postcrossing community for the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of postcards. The plan is to take over a wall at the Universal Postal Union's headquarters in Bern 🇨🇭 and fill it with messages showing the world’s enthusiasm for postcards.

Since then, we’ve received dozens of postcards from you guys, and we’re feeling quite overwhelmed by this avalanche of mail. Your kind words and all the memories you’ve been sharing with us about postcards are just incredible! All the stories, poems, drawings and carefully crafted pieces of mail art make our hearts melt.

Over the past few weeks we’ve uploaded a few of the postcards we’ve received on the 150yearsofpostcards.com gallery… but we thought perhaps a video would be a better way to showcase more of them. So without further ado, here it is:

We hope you liked it! Please don’t be sad if you don’t see your postcard on this video though, as this is just a small selection. Many more have arrived in our PO box, and we treasure every single one of them. 😊

If you haven’t sent in yours yet, what are you waiting for? Send us a postcard telling us what makes postcards special to you, and join us in this worldwide celebration!

You might have noticed that the postcards we’re familiar with today (picture on one side, and space for the address, postage and a message on the back) are very different from the first postcard issued in 1869 by the Austrian Post.

The Correspondenz-Karte, as it was initially called, was just a brown rectangle of paper with space for the address and postage on one side, and a short message on the back. Despite the decorative border, they weren’t meant to be fun or especially pretty. Instead, their purpose was much more practical, enabling short messages to be sent cheaply through the post, a departure from letters and their formal etiquette. Their look was as concise as the messages they carried.

So, when did these lackluster pieces of cardboard begin to be adorned with images and acquired the modern format of our beloved postcards?

Well, that’s a longer story… but in a way, an almost inevitable development. From ancient papyrus to Gutenberg’s bible, decorations have been sneaked onto the pages of written materials ever since humans began to record history on paper. In the 17th and 18th centuries, printing developments brought images to the masses: commercial invoices would sometimes showcase a little miniature of a storefront, and often people carried illustrated calling cards with them. Also common were letter sets featuring elaborate illustrations both on the writing paper and on the envelopes. In 1840, the same year that the Penny Black was issued, Royal Mail launched its own decorated prepaid letter sheets.

Thus, even though the original postcards did not feature illustrations, there were plenty of other items with images on them, and so, bit by bit, they were introduced on postcards as well.

At first, images appeared on the corners of the message side of the postcard, as small vignettes often with advertisement to a hotel or restaurant. Slowly though, other images made their way onto the postcard format and by the 1880s, postcards with the Gruss Aus (greetings from) salute and a few illustrations of a town were a popular holiday souvenir in German-speaking countries.

And then, as photography and printing techniques evolved further still, photos started covering more and more space in postcards, with just a small area left for messages. Finally, in 1906, at the Sixth Postal Union Congress in Rome, the UPU declared that postcards with a divided back could be sent internationally. With no need to write the message on the front any longer, pictures were free to take over the whole space on one side of the postcard.

And this is how the modern format of the picture postcards we know and love today came to be! 😊 If you’re curious to learn more, check out the History page we’ve put together for the 150th anniversary of postcards, and stay tuned for more interesting tidbits of postal history here on the blog.

PS – Our friends at papersisters made a neat postcard to celebrate the 150th anniversary of postcards, and generously sent us a bunch to give away! So if you’d like a postcard with a greeting from the Postcrossing’s headquarters, here’s your chance: leave a comment below and let us know one cool postal fact about your country. We’ll pick 15 random commenters by this time next week to be the recipients of one of these postcards. Good luck!

Some weeks ago, the world celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first humans walking on the moon. Reliving the experience of the Apollo 11 mission was an emotional event all around the world, not just for the millions of people who remember watching the live broadcast on TV with bated breath, but also for the younger generations of dreamers that those astronauts have inspired.

As you can imagine, landing on the Sea of Tranquility is a risky adventure, requiring all sorts of preparations. There’s physical and scientific training to go through, and checklists for all sorts of procedures, but there’s also a more down-to-earth side of things, like life insurance. Can you imagine the price of the insurance for such a perilous and unique mission though? Yup, it’s pretty much astronomical! So how were astronauts supposed to make sure their families were looked after in the event they didn’t make it back to Earth?

When faced with this situation, Apollo 11 astronauts Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong came up with a cunning secret plan: postal covers!

They were famous and their autographs were greatly prized, so they decided to sign dozens of special envelopes in advance, featuring space-themed stamps and motives. These were to be hand-cancelled by friends at the post office on the day that they landed on the moon, and later delivered to their families. In case something happened to them, they hoped these autographed covers could be sold to collectors, in order to give their families some financial security.

Thankfully, they all came back safe and sound from this grand adventure, and didn’t need to use the postal covers as insurance. 😅 But it was still a brilliant plan! And as expected, these special philatelic items became collectibles, and are highly sought after by astrophilatelists, the branch of philately that focus on space-themed stamps. They continued to be made by astronauts until the 16th Apollo mission, and you can discover more of them on this page. Neat! 🌔

So many meetings, so little time! We’re way overdue in telling you about all the cool Postcrossing meetups we’ve been hearing from, so here are three recent events that postcrossers have organized and written to us about. We hope they inspire you to join or organize your own local meetup!

Postcrossing Anniversary Meetups in Indonesia 🇮🇩

Last month, the Indonesian community celebrated Postcrossing’s 14th birthday by organizing meetings in 11 different cities around the country — isn’t that awesome?! Look at this cool mashup that they’ve made with photos of all the meetings:

There’s happy people, cake and balloons… looks like a real birthday party! Lots of postcrossers in the cities of Batam, Medan, Jakarta, Bandung, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Solo, Surabaya, Malang, Makassar and Tenggarong enjoyed spending time together, talking, snacking and writing postcards, of course! You can see more of their meeting photos on this page.

China Bullet Train Meetup Series 🇨🇳

The idea for this unusual series of meetups came from Bin Xu (aka bishopet) who is a super fan of trains and postcards! To combine the two, he contacted 8 postcrossers from 8 different cities along the China Bullet Train route, in Shenyang, Shandong, Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Wuhan, Dongguan and Hong Kong. Meetings were organized in all these cities throughout the month of June, each one with a different postcard featuring the bullet train.

Nizhny Novgorod Postcrossing Meeting 🇷🇺

About three weeks ago, 74 postcrossers from 29 Russian cities got together in Nizhny Novgorod to share their love of postcards with the world! Over the weekend, they wrote and sent almost 2000 postcards — but most importantly, they got the chance meet and get to know each other. Russia is a huge country and for many postcrossers, this was the first chance they got to meet some of the people that they had only previously known online or through postcards. They even had a special postmark made for the event, along with a little mobile post office by Russian Post that allowed everyone to mail their cards immediately. It looks like a lot of fun!

Deers are a symbol of the city of Nizhny Novgorod, and this cute one is the mascot of the local Postcrossing group. These photos are by Anna (aka AnnaRybakova_79), and you can see many more on this page.

That’s all for now! If you’ve been in a nice meetup recently, send us some photos and let us know how it went — we’d love to hear about it. 🙂 And if you’re thinking of joining or organizing a meetup, consider October 1st as a potential date, and join us in celebrating the 150th anniversary of the postcard!