Some 500 "shana tovah" postcards and greeting cards. Various publishers and places, early 20th century to the 1950s.
A diverse collection of "shana tovah" postcards and cards, depicting various themes, in various techniques (featuring textile elements, embossed cards, articulated cards etc.). Including Zionist cards depicting leaders and colonies in Palestine; cards depicting Jewish communities and customs; and various other cards, including numerous undivided postcards.
Rare items include: • Wooden new year's postcard, depicting a Jewish figure holding an umbrella (thin wood sheet, the illustration hand-painted, the greeting and postal information etched). Mailed to Vienna. • Hand-painted postcard depicting a Jewish man wearing a prayer shawl (mailed; undivided). • Illustrated "shana tovah" postcard sent from Yokohama, Japan (1929). • Five "shana tovah" cards, hand-painted on Nazi-era German blank postcards. Depicting the high priest and Jewish men blowing the shofar (watercolor), with printed stamp showing Hitler on verso. • "Shana tovah" postcard published on behalf of the General Girl's Orphanage in Jerusalem (Allg. Isr. Mädchen-Waisenhaus in Jerusalem). [ca. 1910s]. • And more.
Size and condition vary.
Provenance: The Dr. Chaim Grossman Collection.
Dr. Chaim Grossman's Israeliana collection is exceptional in size, quality and variety. Grossman, an educator, historian and folklorist, was a methodical, knowledgeable and meticulous collector, and his deep understanding of Palestinian-Yishuv and Israeli material culture set the ground for a one-of-a-kind collection of mundane and less than mundane objects – from the ephemeral, the negligible, the widely available to the rare and singular.
The "shana tovah" collection left by Grossman – a considerable part of which is offered in the present auction – comprises thousands of postcards, cards, letters and other paper items made and sent year after year in, by and for Jewish communities: in Eastern and Western Europe, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, North Africa, North and South America, as part of the tradition of sending hand-written, hand-drawn or printed new year’s greetings, which originated in German Jewry but with the rise of postcards spread to most communities. The earliest items in the collection date to the 1860s; the latest were made in the late 20th century. It includes both beautifully designed, rare, early and singular postcards and cards, and mass-made, highly popular items sold in large quantities, in varying production quality and in dozens of repeating versions, each according to the technical abilities achieved by the local publication industry.
The collector's devotion to his collection is evident in the sheer number of items, in the wealth of techniques, visuals and themes, and in the thorough, intersectional categorization by period, origin, motif, technique and material. Glitter and relief embossing, scraps, lace and golden ink, lithography and celluloid transparencies, plastic, textile and metal decorations; Yiddish, Hebrew, English, Russian, French, Polish, German greetings; children, angels, families, pets, immigrants, travelers, professionals; portraits and tinted reproductions; Judaism, Zionism, the state, the army; the ritual and the mundane; any new year's greeting, in any form whatsoever, had a place in Grossman's collection and was honored as a historical testimony, as a timeless, invaluable treasure.
