A Christmas greeting, a marriage proposal or news about the end of the war. All of this was written on a postcard without an envelope and a stamp and was delivered to an address. The past does not seem to be as far away as we think, reminds the exhibition "Vernissage of Vanity" of the Kardzhali Regional History Museum. The National Polytechnic Museum Sofia plays host to the exhibition.
The exhibition presents Katisha Ilieva's family collection of 137 black-and-white and coloured postcards covering the period 1913-1931. Most of them are from the period of the First World War (1914-1918) and were sent from the battle front - the so-called soldiers postcards. Others are Christmas, New Year and Easter postcards, name day greeting cards and postcards celebrating the the end of the war, the coronation of King Boris III, etc.
The postcards themselves are small works of art and the exhibition is the first initiative to show them in this light. They are an authentic reflection of historical reality, people‘s daily lives, taste and vanity in miniature, said the curators of the exhibition. Most exhibits are made by European printing houses, including printing houses from Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, German, France and Bulgaria. The messages written on the back of each beautiful postcard reflect the wide variety of human emotions.
The exhibition “Vernissage of Vanity” visits Sofia on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the National Polytechnic Museum and will continue until March 2023.
You can find more interesting facts related to the popular Christmas tradition of sending greeting cards in Radio Bulgaria’s article named "When did the first Christmas tree appear in Bulgaria?".
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