Leather Postcards

 

The above postcard from 1903 shows the City and County Building
in Salt Lake City.  The photo was pasted onto a leather postcard.

What do you do when faced with lots of competition? Make something completely different! That’s what publishers did during the postcard boom of the early 1900s. All kinds of interesting materials were used to pique the interest of buyers. One of these different materials was leather.

Starting in 1903, postcards made of leather were decorated by pyrography (literally “fire-writing”). Also known as pokerwork, it involved decorating the postcards using the tip of a sharp tool heated by fire. Surprisingly, it was a popular craft among ladies. Designs were burned into deerskin and color was often applied afterward. While the leather in newer postcards is often stiff, the leather of the pre-1915 era is very thin and soft.

About 1909, the post office banned the mailing of leather postcards because they were getting hung up in the new sorting machines. But dedicated collectors still sent them using envelopes. In later years when postal machinery became sturdier, the cards were again permitted in the mail. They can still be purchased in souvenir shops, especially in the American West.

Bonnie Wilpon is the author of Postcard History of Sarasota and Bradenton, Florida and Postcard History of Hollywood, Florida (published by Arcadia Books) and is a postcard dealer and collector in Tampa, Florida. She is Membership Chair of the Sunshine Post Card Club and a Contributing Editor for Postcard History. Bonnie can be contacted at: bonnpon@att.net.