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August 25, 2014 by tomdalzell

Chimney Sweep (Mostly Cute) Postcards

Gabby’s major collections involve postcards and record album covers – you have probably noticed this.  He had a nice collection of postcards featuring happy chimney sweeps, mostly German.  I said we didn’t need to see them.  My friend asked to see them.  So – here they are.  You can like them or not.  It just seemed like overkill to me.

Gabby sent the photos with a note urging us to read Blake’s poem about the chimney sweep.

Blake WordsOK.  Blake is always a pleasure.  My friend had two more poems, one of which I cannot read.

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Enough poetry.  Let’s move on to the chimney sweep cards.  In the 19th century, chimney sweeps often had pigs with them.  It had something to do with good luck. The pigs did not help with the work.  Many of the postcards celebrate these pigs:

sweeps-pigs 50d7299c4cdcb99c60311c30df7b095c 323c4eee0733ffd46fd4704a2fdc2337 19b66e8e808b95da837f8b3582a7b26d d1e35964bd9575147df6d30a46647e61-1 5a74072523f1147bdedbed87af3f71b6 a13acc82f1845f27e21b45f52fd04d49 f1259b784dab4fb77fbab3e987d87b4d Good Luck Chimney Sweep Card mJzjXUYdLCDwM_2zezfxFrA 90e642dbe2308c740c163bff3bdfaa3f Screen Shot 2014-08-24 at 7.41.06 AMmeFg57ROwKTLk55E5P6ZGgAPig on Barrel08aab403e621f6da98772dc329099907

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Gabby was especially proud of this sheet of pigs for handmade cards:

Scraps

Wow!

In Germany, the chimney sweep is associated with new year’s, or St. Sylvester’s day.  Also associated with the day – and the chimney sweep – is a red mushroom.  The red fly mushroom is widely considered poisonous.  It may be that this perception was the result hallucinogenic propoerties that were valued both by pre-Christian shamans and early Christian gnostics. It has further been suggested that amanita muscaria may have been referred to in ancient Indian Vedic texts as the mystic plant, Soma.  Here are a couple postcards showing a chimney sweep with red mushrooms:

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He sent two with both pigs and mushrooms!

Screen Shot 2014-08-25 at 5.11.01 AM

Pig

And then many without pigs and without mushrooms:

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The last two really knocked my socks off.

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The dressed cats genre meets the chimney sweep genre – how fantastic is that?

When my friend saw that I had enjoyed these postcards, he gloated.  There is no other way to put it.  I had passed on the postcards, but he had insisted.  He pointed to them and said:

IMG_3677

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One Response to Chimney Sweep (Mostly Cute) Postcards

  1. jan smith says:
    July 31, 2018 at 4:17 am

    The cat with the top hat and the ladder is similar to a panel in the Moscow cat theatre, looks like it could have been a postcard but i cant find anything so far. You know anything, please be in touch
    Thanks
    Jan smith

    Reply

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