Antique & Vintage Postcards

A masterwork of hand-tinted Edwardian topography: Tower Bridge rises in its full Victorian Gothic glory over the busy Thames, its bascules lowered as a great red-hulled steamer — likely a coastal collier or cargo vessel — pushes upstream past the ancient walls of the Tower of London, whose medieval drum towers and curtain walls fill the foreground in warm ochre stone. This view, numbered 176 in the publisher's series, was produced during a period when the Port of London was the busiest in the world and Tower Bridge — opened only in 1894 — was still a genuine novelty for tourists. The hand-applied coloring, a hallmark of the "British Production" era before photochrome printing dominated, lends the river an almost impressionistic turquoise hue and gives the bridge's walkways their familiar blue-grey tone. One imagines a traveler named "George" sending this home as evidence that London really was as grand as advertised. The card is unused, with a decorative divided-back printed in the publisher's house style.