Honeycomb paper postcards

These three honeycomb paper fold-out postcards are from the first decade of the 20th century. They were printed in Germany, which had the best quality printing in the world at that time (World War I and the resulting global economy changed that).

The color of this one is still beautifully bright since it's a folded card and has been stored away from sunlight for about a hundred years (!).

It's hard to read what is written on the back and front of the card but basically it's from a sister sending her brother a postcard with a bug on it because he is afraid of bugs. Ha ha! Kids are so different these days.

The dark purple gradated edging on the honeycomb is so delicate and pretty. I'm wondering if it could possibly have been hand painted or hand rolled on an ink pad because just the outer edges are colored.

This pretty swallow with the red epaulet has an added printed paper wing glued to the honeycomb tissue. It's very sweet. This one is fun to unfold and then fold again because it looks like the bird could sort of be flying. I'm surprised it's still intact. 

It's postmarked 1907. On the reverse side the sender wrote to tell the recipient to pull the string to open it. These cards are perforated on the edges so I imagine they were sealed on the outside edge in some way for mailing.

I'm now thinking these things must have been hand-colored  because how else to explain the red spot on just one side of the honeycomb?

Here is another bird (but flightless, so you can't play the pretend flying game by halfway closing the card and then opening it up again). Gold glitter outlines the legs and neck of the ostrich and also the sandy horizon line.

I just love these things. No editorial. No sending situation. Just some neat images. And lots of pointless delicate prettiness. I took a creative writing class in college once and the professor said that if our stories did not have a point (or a moral), they would be pointless. I know he was trying to make...um, a point....but if something has no point? I can't help to be drawn to it.

Postcards were incredibly popular at the beginning of the 20th century. On June 30, 1908, when the fiscal year ended for the U.S. Post Office, nearly 700 million postcards were mailed. The population at that time? About 90 million.  

1907-15 was considered the Golden Age of Postcards. People could not send enough of them and the quality and variety at that time was incredible. And the subject matter? Some of it was delightfully pointless. My kind of era. :-)