Your Fortune Postcards by Joseph Welch and Sons
From Mystic Tea Room
The series of fortune teller cards titled "Your Fortune" all bear the publisher's initials "JWS" on the front, followed by a number. JWS stood for Joseph Welch and Sons, a photographic publisher Portsmouth, England, from from 1864 to 1936. Joseph and his three sons, Horace, Ernest, and Claude, published nearly 4000 postcards. Most of these were view cards depicting scenic locations in the south of England and the Channel Islands.
When the postcard craze took hold, around 1905, Joseph Welch and Sons entered that field and added a limited range of topical cards, such as "Proverbs" (very similar to modern memes) and fortune telling cards. The company's early coloured cards were produced in Belgium and in Germany, utilizing a "Trichromatic" process that resulted in a limited pallet of pastel tones. The numbering system on JWS cards was illogical and chaotic, with some cards double-numbered, but for the collectors among us, i have included the numbers here, but they are displayed according to the method of divination employed. Due to the rarity of these cards, i do not own and cannot scan a complete set. Some of the images here were blown up from tiny thumbnails found on the web 10 to 15 years ago. I am actively buying these cards, so if you have any for sale, or have better scans to share, please contact me.
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