Antique & Vintage Postcards

Two matching cabinet card portraits from the storied Bad Homburg studio of T.H. Voigt capture a young boy and girl — likely siblings — dressed in the stiff Victorian finery of the early 1890s: the boy in a lapelled sack coat with white collar, the girl in a dramatic puffed-sleeve dark dress with ruffled bib. One card is a full-length pose beside a rustic twig prop rail; the other a closer bust study of the same pair. On the back of the full-length card, a period hand has inscribed "Onkel Eckhardt / Mama" — a tender family notation tying these children to relatives named Eckhardt. T.H. Voigt operated at Promenade Nr. 61, Bad Homburg vor der Höhe, holding appointments as court photographer ("Königl. Hof-Photograph") to an extraordinary roll of royalty: the Emperor and King of Germany and Prussia, Her Majesty the Queen of England and Empress of India, the Prince of Wales, S. Majestät des Königs von Spanien, S. Majestät des Königs von Serbien, and the Grossherzog von Mecklenburg — a constellation of late-19th-century European crowned heads who all took the waters at Bad Homburg's celebrated spa.