The Nantucket Postcard

Curt Teich & Co. of Chicago was the largest and most prolific postcard printer in America, producing linen-finish postcards from the 1930s through the 1950s. Founded by German immigrant Curt Teich in 1898, the company pioneered the vivid, hand-retouched color process—black-and-white photographs colorized and printed on cloth-textured stock—that came to define the classic American souvenir postcard. Teich sent photographers and salesmen across the country, Nantucket included, building an enormous catalog of small-town and tourist views that's now considered one of the richest visual records of mid-century America.