Antique & Vintage Postcards

Perched dramatically on stone pilings against a hillside of wind-bent grass, a traditional Swiss raised granary — a raccard or stadel, elevated on mushroom-shaped staddle stones to deter rodents — dominates this striking pen-and-ink composition, its open-slatted timber walls and heavy stone-weighted roof rendered in meticulous crosshatched linework that conveys the textures of wood, stone, and alpine meadow with remarkable economy of means. A second, smaller outbuilding sits tucked into the slope to the left, and mountain ridges fade into a softly clouded sky behind. Published by Vouga & Cie., Éditeurs, Genève as No. 213a, this card is a companion to No. 212 in the same artistic series — both sharing the same embossed cream stock, the same ink-drawing technique, and the same unused, pristine condition that suggests they were purchased together as souvenirs, perhaps by a traveller to Switzerland around 1900, and never sent.