Antique & Vintage Postcards

Sent from the seaside town of Whitehead on the Antrim coast of Northern Ireland in October 1962, this charming "View Novelty" fold-out postcard conceals a cascade of miniature black-and-white photographs beneath its colorful multi-view linen front — showing Whitehead and Blackhead from the Belfast Road, the promenade looking north, the Blackhead Path, and the swimming pool — while the writer, Ella, tells Mr. and Mrs. Best in Rochester, New York that she is "spending a week at the seaside, feeling well and able to be around again," and that the weather has been the best all summer, a sentence that carries the quiet relief of someone returned to health. The Queen Elizabeth II definitive stamp, postmarked at Whitehead, Co. Antrim, on October 4, 1962, anchors this transatlantic missive in the last weeks before the Cuban Missile Crisis would make the world hold its breath.