Antique & Vintage Postcards

Deep in the porch of a 16th-century Breton church, stone apostles stand in their niches with the patient dignity of figures who have watched six centuries of Breton winters pass — their features worn smooth by time and Atlantic damp, yet still commanding in the dim light captured by this evocative postcard. The church at Lanloup, a tiny village in the Côtes-d'Armor department of Brittany, retains one of the region's finest examples of Renaissance Gothic porche sculpture, with the apostle figures ranked along the right-hand wall beside an ancient bénitier (holy water stoup) whose carved bracket is just visible at lower left. Publisher A. Waron of Saint-Brieuc produced the celebrated "La Bretagne Pittoresque" (Picturesque Brittany) series that documented the region's extraordinary religious architecture and folk culture in the early 20th century, and this card — numbered A.W. 702 — is part of that systematic survey. Breton church architecture cards from Waron's series are collected both for their documentary value and their atmospheric photographic quality.