A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Cabinet Card
A cabinet card consists of a 4 by 5 1/2 inch photograph, usually on thin albumen or carbon paper, pasted to a rigid 4 1/4 by 6 1/2 inch color board to prevent curling. The photo studio’s name is printed on the front or back of the card, very often with decorative gold gilding. These cards were almost exclusively used for portraiture and sparked the photo retouching profession. Though often put out in display cabinets, they were made in a specific size to fit into specially made albums for collectors. Other photographs of various but consistent sizes that were pasted onto cards went by different names such as Boudoir, Imperial, Promenade, Trilby, and Victoria, but the cabinet card was the most popular. Though never meant to be sent through the mail, they were in many ways a precursor to real photo postcards for they ingrained the habit of collecting photo images with the public. The introduction of heavy weight photo paper needed to make real photo postcards made mounted cards relatively expensive and unnecessary, which helped usher in their demise. Introduced in 1863, cabinet cards were popular until the turn of the century though manufactured until 1924.

Cachet
A cachet is a rubber hand stamp placed on a letter or postcard by an institution other than a Government Post Office. They were usually designed and used to commemorate a special event. Sometimes an official government hand stamped cancel that contains an unusual design is also referred to as a cachet.

Calendering
Calendering refers to the pressing of paper between two metal rollers in its final stage of manufacture. As pulp dries on a screen, the pattern of the screen will impart itself onto the bottom side of the paper while the top will develop a rough and irregular surface as it dries. These papers in natural form are often used by artists but they provide a poor substrate for commercial printing that usually requires a smoother surface to pick up detail. To achieve this natural paper can be flattened by passing it between heavy polished rollers, a process called cold press. If even smoother paper is needed the rollers can be heated, a process referred to as hot press. Various textures can also be embossed into the paper at this stage by creating a textured stereotype for one of the rollers. This is how textured paper was manufactured for linen postcards. The calendering process is also used with textiles and plastic sheets.

Cancel (Postmark)
A cancel is the placement of a mark over postage to designate that it has been accepted into use by a postal system and to prevent it from being used for postal services again. There are various types of cancels and the more unique ones are collected. One type of collectible cancel has different designs or slogans incorporated within them. Another category are cancels from unusual postal facilities such as those on ships, railroads, trolleys, pneumatic offices, and from expositions. Sometimes cards with rural free delivery (R.D.F.) cancels fall into this category. Postmarks issued from defunct post offices or former U.S. Territories are also collected. Certain cancels can add great value to a postcard’s worth.

Carbo Colour
Carbo Colour is a trade name for a type of lithographic postcard printed by Valentine’s during the 1930’s. They are characterized by an open halftone with added ben day patterns. They were printed in distinct RGB colors that blend so little that these cards sometimes appear to be hand colored.

Carbon Print
A carbon print is a photographic print made by the triple transfer of an image on gelatin emulsions. Three pieces of paper are coated with a photosensitive gelatin emulsion containing carbon powder. The first sheet is exposed to a negative and developed out in water. It is then positioned emulsion to emulsion with a second sheet of hardened gelatin, and pressed together into one piece. The paper from the first sheet is then removed. This thin gelatin film is called carbon tissue. The areas on it exposed to light have hardened while the remaining gelatin has washed away. Because the fully exposed areas are now attached to the new paper side, the remaining mid-tones and highlights tend to wash off producing images with poor tonal range. Since this image was transferred from one tissue to another it is now in reverse, and must be transferred by the same process to the third emulsion to regain a correctly oriented image. This is basically a gum printing process elaborated on by Alphonse Louis Potevin in 1855.

In 1864 Joseph Wilson Swan took this technique a step further by adjusting the transfer process so that the gelatin emulsion was only washed after the first transfer and from the opposite side thus preserving more of the original detail. An alum bath would then be used to harden the remaining gelatin. This emulsion was known as gelatin tissue. The prints created through these improvements display a wide and rich tonal range. Substituting various pigments for the original carbon could change the color of the final print. Because no silver is used these photographs are known for their permanence. The process was most widely used between 1870 and 1910 but the invention of gelatin tissue had a longer lasting effect on other applications used by the printing industry.

Carbon Tissue
Carbon tissue is a thin gelatin emulsion photosensitized with potassium dichromate and infused with a fine carbon powder, patented by Alphonse Louis Poiteven in 1855 and improved upon by John Pouncy in 1858. Further experimentation by J.W. Swan in 1864 led to its evolution into gelatin tissue.

Card Photo
A card photo refers to any type of photograph, though usually albumen, pasted onto paperboard. Early photographs were made on thin sheets of paper that suffered from extreme curling due to the emulsion on one sided drying at a different rate than its plain paper back. They were often pasted onto stiff paperboard to prevent this curling. Card photos almost always had borders and came in a range of set sizes so those who collected them could more easily place these cards in albums. Each size had its own name with the most popular varieties being the cartes de visite, the cabinet card, and the stereo-view. As postcards became popular, photo paper began to be manufactured on a heavier stock that did not curl as much so they could be used as postcards. Since these real photo postcards were less expensive to produce they quickly replaced most card photos by 1910.

Card Stock (Pressboard)
Card stock is a stiff heavyweight commercial paper used when durability is needed. It can be manufactured in a thick single sheet but it usually consist of many thinner sheets of paper pressed or pasted together. Each layer is referred to as a ply. Pressboard is used for postcards and trade cards among other items. On postcards manufactured without adequate paste or stored in damp conditions, the different plies can sometimes separate from one another.

Cartephilia
Cartephilia is an archaic term used in the early 20th century to describe postcard collecting. It was passed down years later to describe those who collect reward or trading cards (Cartephiles).

Cartel
A cartel is a group of corporations who have made agreements with one another to similarly address mutual business concerns such as price fixing, supply limits, and sales quotas, all to stifle competition. Cartel agreements often create de facto monopolies. Since outlawed in the United States by antitrust laws, cartels can be mostly found in Europe where they now operate on international levels.

Cartouche
A cartouche is framing element surrounding a body of text. It originally referred to elongated oval shapes in Egyptian hieroglyphs that contained a royal name. The term was latter applied to the highly decorative scroll work placed on printed matter, especially maps that enclosed a title and other relevant information. These ornamentations were often created and designed to fill up otherwise empty compositional space. The more simple shapes that contain calligraphy on Japanese prints is also referred to as a cartouche.

Cartes de Visite (Visiting Card)
A cartes de visite is a photograph, usually albumen, pasted to a rigid 2 1/2 by 4 inch card with the photo studio’s name printed on the front or back. Introduced by the Frenchman Andre Adolphe Eugene Disdore in the 1850’s, they remained popular until the 1880’s when replaced in popularity by the larger cabinet card. Cartes de visite served many purposes from personal calling cards to album collectables depicting family members or famous personalities. They were often referred to as Album Cards.

Celesque
Celesque was the name for a type of early offset lithographic postcard printed in a series by the Photochrom Company. They were untypical for their time for they were printed in photo separated red, yellow, and blue. Celesque cards were manufactured in Great Britain.

Chase
A chase is an iron or steel frame designed to contain letterpress type or block images. When a chase is locked together with its contents for printing on a press bed they create a form.

Checklist
A checklist is a list of titles along with the identification numbers of all the postcards issued by a single publisher. Collectors sometimes put checklists together as few such records exist from publishers or printing firms. Businesses often kept bad records and many of those that did accurately document output often had their records destroyed in war or they were discarded after the company went out of business. Only a few checklists exist for postcards and most of these are incomplete.

Chemical Paper
Chemical paper is made by cooking wood chips in a bisulfate of lime or a caustic soda at high temperatures. This reduces wood into pure cellulose that can be further processed into different paper types. It is often bleached and sometimes combined with other types of fibers. Its high chemical residue eventually causes this paper to yellow and become brittle with age. Most postcards as almost all ephemera are made from this type of pulp.

China Clay (Kaolin)
China clay is the white mineral kaolinite (hydrous aluminum silicate), formed by the decomposition of aluminum silicates, particularly feldspar. The Chinese used Kaolin since the 7th century in the manufacture of porcelain. Today it is most widely used in the coating of papers to create a bright glossy surface that will not absorb printing ink.

Chine Collé (Chine Appliqué)
Chine Collé is a process in which a thin sheet of paper with a light dried coating of water soluble paste on its back is placed between an inked intaglio plate and a thicker sheet of damp paper during printing. Ink is printed onto the thin paper but a bond is formed between the two papers creating one single sheet. Traditionally a China paper, made from bamboo was used, but the technique is possible with most thin papers. Though sometimes employed to create a finer impression on heavy stock, these papers were most often used to create a toned or color backdrop to the image that normal printing papers did not offer. Chine Collé was also used in a collage fashion to create decorative elements within an image.

Chinoiserie
Chinoiserie is a decorative style introduced to Europe in the late 1600’s influenced by the large scale arrival of imported goods and pictures from China. While Chinoiserie had its greatest impact among those countries with the most Chinese trade, England, Holland, and Portugal, the style eventually spread to all parts of Europe. It was applied primarily to architecture in the creation of fanciful structures of unusual proportions such as the pagodas that filled the gardens of many large estates. Lacquer like materials were often employed in their creation. The style peaked in the mid 18th century when Rococo dominated the arts. As America entered the China trade similar influences began to appear in the United States but to a lesser extent. After 1860 this style would blend into the more influential elements arriving from Japan.

Chloride Paper
Chloride paper is a blue light sensitive photo paper coated with an emulsion of silver chloride in gelatin. When first introduced this paper was considered so fast that it was marketed as capable of being exposed under gaslight (gaslight paper), as opposed to exclusively by sunlight. This paper however proved too slow for enlarging and was only used for contact printing. Chloride paper is printed out and produces a very fine tonal range with excellent detail, but it tends to produce a yellow or red cast, so it is often toned. It was the first paper used for real photo postcards.

Chris-A-Tone Card
A Chris-A-Tone card is the trade name for an early type of natural color Photochrome postcard published by Christian’s Photo Service in Portland, Oregon.

Chrome
The term chrome is short for photochrome, and it is in wider usage than the proper name. Chrome is also sometimes used as a suffix to another name designating a specific printing process related to lithography. It is also sometimes used as a suffix to another name designating a specific type of transparency film.

Chromatic
Anything chromatic is perceived as having a hue, it is neither white, gray or black.

Chromolithography (Lithochrome)
The term chromolithography specifically means a lithographic print produced in three or more colors. Color had been used in lithography since the process was invented in 1796, but Godefrey Engleman first put it to commercial use in France during the 1830’s. America’s first chromolithograph would be made in Boston in 1840. By the late 19th century these prints had gained immense popularity with the rising middle class as they became a cheep alternative to original art work. Some images were being printed in as many as thirty colors to duplicate the effects of paintings. This made them difficult to print since tight registration was needed to create a flawless image, and they often suffer from a dull look as light cannot easily pass through all the layers of ink and reflect back off the paper’s surface to the eye. While many forms of color lithographs exist, only those drawn by hand in many hues rather than produced through photography are now generally called chromolithographs. From this process a whole range of printed color paper products flooded the market of which much was collected, and in 1889 the world’s first color postcard was printed in Austria. For the remainder of the Century chromolithography was the primary method of producing color cards.

Chromoxylography
Chromoxylography was an early method of color printing in which three separate wood engraved blocks would be inked in red, blue, and yellow, and when printed together would yield a single color image. Although labor intensive, this method was not usually used for quality illustrations for it created an unusual look, not a natural one. This technique was usually applied to simple illustrations such as those used for comics. This tradition was later carried on in comics even when they began being printed in lithography as the style was so distinct.

Cigarette Card
Cigarette cards are a type of free reward cards containing advertising and other imagery that accompanied the purchase of cigarettes. Allon & Ginter were the first to print images on the cardboard stiffeners in cigarette packs in 1886, and the trend continued into the 1930’s. Cigarette cards like the trade cards that inspired them, became collectors items before postcards, and reached their peak in popularity between the two World Wars. Production stopped during WWII due to supply shortages, and they were never produced in large numbers again. They had been the most popular form of reward cards.

Cirkut Camera
A Cirkut camera is one of many different types of rotating panoramic cameras. Panoramic cameras first made their appearance in 1857 but the most popular was the Cirkut cameras that began to be manufactured by the Century Camera Company of Rochester, N.Y. in 1907. It was designed to take shots of large groups of people, for its ability to rotate allowed the camera to be moved close in to the subject and still capture the entire scene. They came in different sizes using filmstrips between two and twenty feet long. The Eastman Kodak Company eventually bought this firm out and continued to manufacture Cirkut cameras. Many multi-paneled postcards were made from photographs taken by these cameras. Modern variations of this camera are still used today.

Clucking Clerk
A Clucking Clerk is a type of postcard vending machine in which the buyer makes a card selection, inserts money, and then the card is dispensed by a chicken. This device made its first appearance in Hot Springs, Arkansas with chickens trained by animal psychologist Keller Breland. Despite the fame these birds received from magazine articles and television shows they were never paid more than chicken feed.

CMYK Colors
The four CMYK colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black form the basis of process printing. The K representing Key is used to signify black to avoid its confusion with blue. The combination of these primary subtractive colors in varying proportions can create the illusion of a full color printed image. When all three subtractive primaries are combined as pure light, black is formed, but the chemical composition of color pigments react differently than light energy; they cannot absorb all wavelengths and create a dark muddy brown instead. Because of the inability of inks to mix into an optical black, black ink needs to be added to the three primaries as a fourth color when using them in printing.

Coated Paper
A paper that has a coating applied to it to give the sheet a brighter, glossier appearance, and improved printability by preventing ink absorption is called a coated paper. Both sides of a paper sheet can be coated, but when only one side is coated it tends to curl. This type of paper was originally coated by hand, but the process had become completely mechanized by the mid-19th century. Paper coatings are made from substances like China Clay or calcium carbonate, and can account for 50% of a paper’s weight.

Cockle Finish
A cockle finish is sometimes applied to machine made papers to make it resemble the uneven puckered look of a hand made paper. This effect is created by air drying the paper under little or no tension. While cockle finishes were most often used when manufacturing bond writing paper, it was occasionally used in the production of postcards. This finish can cause inks to blur making the printing technique employed sometimes difficult to discern. A postcard left to air dry after being wet will assume a similar finish but this is considered damage.

Collectable
A collectable is a manufactured item that possesses the attractive characteristics necessary to cause someone to save it without any regard to its practical use. Collectibles can be ephemera, those paper objects such as tickets or match covers that were made to be discarded after use, or they can also be objects that never served a practical purpose but were specifically made for the collector such as baseball cards. Many items as postcards fall between categories as they have always been purchased to send messages as well as purely collected. The term collectable entered general use in the 1930’s to distinguish vintage objects from antiques which implies an age of at least a hundred years. Postcards are now shifting from collectable to antique by that definition. Natural objects like seashells are not considered collectables even though they are collected.

Collodion
Collodion is a base used for photo emulsions invented by J.B. Obernetter in Germany in 1867. It is made from nitrocellulose suspended in ether or alcohol, rendering it highly flammable and dangerous to use. It was mixed with silver chloride to produce printing out papers in both matte and glossy surfaces. While it produced brown to purplish hues, collodion could also be toned into many different colors. This emulsion is appreciated for the sharp detail and subtleties it can capture often causing collodion photos to be mistaken for platinum prints. It lost its popularity around 1900 but was still in use to 1920.

Collotype (Glass Printing)
A collotype is a type of continuous tone print invented by Josef Albert in Germany in 1868. The process starts with a glass plate that is coated with a photosensitive dichromate colloid gelatin. When exposed to light through a reverse negative, the lit areas harden into an insoluble finish in proportion to the tones of the image. The dichromate in areas with little or no exposure to light is washed out from the gelatin in cold water. The finished plate is then printed in a similar manner to a lithograph. A solution of glycerin and water is spread over the plate's surface, which is absorbed by the gelatin. The dark tones absorb little or no moisture while the lighter tones and non-image areas absorb the most. When a stiff greasy ink is rolled over the plate, the non-image areas holding the most moisture repel the ink, and the dry hardened image areas attract the ink. The image is then transferred to paper through a flatbed cylinder press. This process is prized for its fine detail, higher than that of lithography or gravure. It remains the most accurate reproductive printing method available today. The glass plate however was a major drawback for it is very fragile and usually yields 1000 impressions, 2000 at the most. This severely limited its commercial use but it proved adequate for small press runs and was widely used for postcards. The shallow plate cannot produce the dark rich tones of gravure, but this makes it very receptive to hand coloring. This process was elaborated on in different ways resulting in techniques such as albertype, autogravure, heliotype, lichtdruck, and photo-type. The production of collotypes was eventually adapted to gelatin coated aluminum plates that could be used on rotary presses. This increased output and made it a relatively cheap and fast printing method for its day. There have been claims that this process was more popular in Europe because their general lower humidity produced superior printed results. The collotype process has been largely abandoned since the 1940’s except in the fine arts.

Colorant
Colorants are the ingredients that impart color to another substance. Colorants can be either dyes or pigments.

Color Filter
A color filter is a transparent sheet of dyed glass, plastic, or gelatin used in photography to selectively absorb only certain colors of the visual spectrum while permitting other colors to pass through. For color separation, filters of the three additive primaries, red, green, blue, are used. A red filter is used to create a cyan negative, a green filter produces magenta, and a blue filter will produce yellow. They were first employed for use with panchromatic film so that a color image could be produced from three black & white negatives. They were later put to use in creating color separated printing plates from color photographs.

Color Photo Engraving
A color photo engraving is a type of intaglio print on which simulated natural color can be created from black & white photographs. This process was made possible by Frederick Ives’ invention of panchromatic emulsions in 1881. The same subject was shot through three different color filters representing the additive primaries onto three different negatives. A halftone would then be created from each negative, (a de facto color separation) and retouched if necessary before being photographically transferred to a series of printing plates. Each plate was individually inked in a corresponding process color for printing. While this process produced the first natural color images it was a very complicated and expensive printing method that prevented it from doing well commercially.

Colorpoeme
A Colorpoeme is a trade name used by the Lumitone Press in the 1930’s for their illustrated postcard series depicting views of New York City by Pierre Trapier. Trapier was a well known artist at this time that created a large body of work depicting the great cities of the United States and Europe. Many of these pictures were reproduced in both postcard and print formats.

Color Roll
A color roll is an inexpensive method of adding color to an image that would normally be printed in just black & white. Two colors, often blue and a dull orange would be placed side by side on the inking slab of a press where there edges are blended seamlessly together with a roller. This duel blend would then be printed on paper, and the black & white plate that holds the details of the image would be printed over it. Though the two colors do not really correspond in any exacting way to the imagery, it was used as a gimmick to attract customers away from more plain cards. This technique is also sometimes employed by artists on hand pulled prints.

Color Separation
The process of dividing an image into individual color segments is called color separation. After separating colors each segment is then copied onto an individual printing plate that will be inked in different colors, and when printed in perfect registration a full colored image will be produced. The first color separations were based solely on personal interpretations of various color theories, and solely dependent on the retoucher’s skill to divide hues. After photography became available the same black & white image was often transferred to multiple substrates and the retoucher would then remove or add parts to correspond to a particular color but their placement continued being discretionary. The arrival of panchromatic emulsions allowed natural color to be simulated for the first time on a scientific basis even though they were created with black & white photographs shot through color filters. While attempts continued to be made to create natural looking images through a more limited pallet, success would be limited until the invention of Kodachrome transparency film in 1935. This color film would eventually simplify the use of filters, and separations were could now made according to subtractive color theory. Process cameras are able to create large halftone negatives for each needed color. An intermediate color separation would sometimes be made, and then retouched before creating the final halftone. Today optical scanners create color separations with the information registered digitally. Scanned color separations can be quickly manipulated and edited in an infinite number of ways using computer software.

Colourtone
Colourtone is a trade name for a type of postcard produced by Valentine’s during the 1930’s. Colourtones were printed in lithographic halftones using a distinct red, yellow, and blue pallet. These cards are often distinguished by wide Tartan patterned borders with symbolic elements added.

Commercialchrome
Commercialchrome is a trade name for a type of postcard that was printed through a four-color halftone lithographic process by the Curt Teich Company in the United States.

Comstock Laws
The Comstock Laws were passed on March 3rd, 1873 at the urging of Anthony Comstock’s New York Society for the Suppression of Vice and the Y.M.C.A., that prohibited the United States Postal Service to be used for the transmission of obscene materials. Obscene of course is a relative term and the law was used to seize and burn more than 120 tons of books from authors such as Honore de Balzac, Victor Hugo, Ernest Hemingway, Eugene O’ Neil, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, John Steinbeck, Leo Tolstoy, William Faulkner, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. At least 18 million postcards were also destroyed and more than 3500 publishers prosecuted. When a play of George Bernard Shaw was banned from the mail, he coined the term Comstockery, to denote censorship based on prudery. This law was used extensively to ban all information regarding birth control until that section was repealed in 1936. The rest of the law remains on the books and is still in use.

Contact Print
A contact print is a photographic print made by exposing a photosensitive paper to negative film with both emulsions in direct contact to one another. No enlarger is needed as the negative rests directly against the paper under a sheet of glass to keep both flat and contact even. The detail in the resulting print is the same size as on the negative. In 1902 Kodak released Velox photo paper that was not only the same size as a postcard, but also the same size as the negative produced by their camera. These products made the production of real photo postcards relatively easy, and most early cards were created this way. To achieve a white tab or border on a contact printed photo, a mask need to be used that cropped part of the image. Contact printing is often used for exposures on photo papers that have poor light sensitivity and is required by all papers that must be exposed to sunlight.

Continental Card
A continental card is one that is larger than standard postcard size measuring 4 by 6 inches (10 by 15-cm). Continentals have been produced in Europe since the 19th century but only in number since the 1930&rsquos;s. Germany and the Soviet Union were the two largest producers of such cards but Italy, Poland, and Switzerland produced many as well. This larger format did not become popular in the United States until the late 1970’s. They now rival standard size postcards in sales and many printers only produce Continental cards. This size has also become the most favored for digital photo prints.

Continuous Tone
Continuous tone is a characteristic of value where any range of tones from black, through grays, to white have no discerning demarcations between each other. The term is usually used to denote the subtly blended tones produced by a printing process that does not employ halftone screens, which only produce optical tone.

Contract Card
A contract card is a postcard manufactured by written contract for a small publisher either through a jobber, a larger publisher, or directly with a printer. Most often Contract cards refer to a set of cards printed specifically for the promotion of a business such as a hotel or railroad, and for commercial photographers that have no means to create their own printed cards.

Copper Window
View-cards in which the windows of depicted buildings are covered in copper or another metal to make them shine under reflected light are referred to as copper window cards. When metallic inks are printed onto a card they require their own plate and press run. Metallic powders may also be applied to create a copper window effect through bronzing.

Copperplate
Copper plate refers to an intaglio method of printing text from a metal plate (usually copper) where the letters are engraved into it. Copperplate is largely used for items printed in very limited quantities such as invitations, or for special pages inserted into books where a more ornamental text style was needed that could not be set in type.

Copyright
A copyright is the exclusive right granted to an individual or incorporated business by a government, to publish, reproduce, and distribute any literary or artistic work they create for a specified number of years. Copyrighted material may be legally used by others with permission of the copyright holder, through licensing, or by right of fair use. Because of the difficulty and cost in obtaining a copyright most early postcards were not copyrighted. The copyright notice found on many postcards usually does not belong to the publisher but to the photographer who supplied the initial photograph that the image was made from. This can often cause confusion for the notice can predate publication by many years. Laws governing copyright can be complicated as they were revised many times and vary country to country. Once a copyright expires it falls into the public domain for free use.

Correspondence Card
In the United States a correspondence card is a type of postcard that was privately printed prior to the effective date, July 1, 1898, of the Private Mailing Card Act of May 19, 1898. Writing could only be placed on the front, as the back was entirely reserved for the address and stamp, and it required two cents to mail. These cards did not carry anything more than simple illustrations as they were most often designed for correspondence and not as souvenirs. The term correspondence card was also used in other countries to make reference to their officially issued postals.

Coupon Cards
A coupon card is a postcard published by a newspaper that could only be acquired by redeeming coupons appearing in that same newspaper. Different sets of coupon cards were usually offered on a weekly basis. The exchange of coupons for postcards was a promotional gimmick primarily used in the years 1904 to 1910 to help sell more papers.

Court Size
A court sized card refers to early privately printed postcards that began being manufactured in Great Britain in 1894. These cards were required by law to range between 2 1/4 by 3 1/4 inches and 3 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches in size, which was smaller than standard Government issued postal stationary. On November 1, 1899 this size requirement was repealed allowing all postcards to be made in the standard size.

Cover
A cover is a paper sheet that is meant to wrap mailed correspondence for protection and privacy. Eventually covers were manufactured in the form we now refer to as an envelope. They did not become common until regulations that required them to be counted toward postage, charged by the page were repealed. More often this term specifically refers to mailing envelopes that have a picture printed on them. Patriotic themes are the most common type of illustration to be found on them, which became highly popular during the American Civil War. Illustrated covers were sometimes purchased as a display of patriotism, or saved after use. Illustrated covers continue to be made and are now saved as collectables, often in conjunction with related postmarks such as first day issues.

Crayon Print
A crayon print is a matte surfaced black & white photograph that has been hand colored with a color crayon specifically manufactured for that purpose. There is little information on early crayons except they were most likely made from colored chalks. In the 1930’s Kodak introduced their own set of soluble crayons in a boxed kit.

Crazing (Alligatoring)
The stress cracks that that fall short of complete fractures appearing in polymer glazes is known as crazing. Sometimes this term is more generically used to describe any type of cracking such as those found on postcards. Postcards are usually covered with a thin coat of varnish to prevent the ink from smudging as they are handled. Sometimes these varnishes or layers of gelatin were more thickly applied to ad sheen to the postcard image. In time these heavy overlays tend to yellow and become brittle. Since this glazed surface is hard and the paper of a card is flexible many small cracks may appear over a card’s entire surface.

Cropping
The elimination of part of an image during a phase in its reproduction is known as cropping. Early photographs were all made with large format cameras as the poor light sensitivity of early photo papers required all photographs to be contact printed. When many of these large negatives were used to make a smaller postcard in later years, the image had to be cropped down as they were still typically contact printed. The composition on large negatives was often expansive enough to produce cards in either horizontal or vertical formats and sometimes both were used. When a card was reprinted the cropping often shifted creating a different if not wholly new composition. Even when postcard sized negatives were eventually manufactured they were still susceptible to cropping as masks were employed to create writing tabs within different sections of the card. Images were also purposely cropped in various ways so that a single negative could produce different looking cards, thus reducing cost.

Cross-Over Cards
A cross-over card is a type of postcard whose subject matter allows it to be categorized under a number of different genres. For instance a depiction of a sledding scene could possibly be filed under Children, Sleds, Winter, Winter Sports, or even possibly Artist Signed or real photo cards in addition to its geographic location.

Curteichcolor
Curteichcolor is a trade name used by the Curt Teich Company to designate their postcards printed as modern photochromes. Their identification numbers incorporated the letter K.

Cut
The term cut is short for a wood engraving.

Cutout Post Cards (Newspaper Cards)
Cutout post cards were a type of postcard published by newspapers and distributed in sheet form as free supplements to their papers. These cards needed to be cut apart for mailing, which often gave them irregular edges. They were printed on paper rather than heavier card stock, which led many of them to be saved more often than mailed. Cutouts were first issued in 1903 during the Hearst-Pulitzer newspaper wars to help increase circulation. Many other newspapers eventually copied the idea. These types of cards were rarely seen beyond 1907.

Cyanotype
A cyanotype is a type of photographic print made in a blue monochrome. Sir John Hirchel invented the process in 1842, in order to make copies of his scientific notes. Cyanotype paper is made photosensitive by coating it with ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide. This solution soaks into the paper’s fibers rather than resting on its surface as most other emulsions. When exposed to light through contact printing with a negative, the iron compounds break down by oxidation. The exposure is then printed out, which causes a further reaction between the new iron salts and the potassium ferricyanide. Ferroprusate is formed in the areas that were exposed to light yielding a photographic image in a flat Prussian blue. Sometimes these colors can range from a blue-black to purple if variations in processing are made. Though they slowly fade in light, many homemade real photo postcards were made this way. They generally went out of fashion in the 1920’s. Variants such as kallitypes, palladium, and platinum prints utilize the same basic iron salt chemistry. Architectural blueprints are also made through this same process. Cyanotypes should not be confused with the blue toned bromide photo papers that became popular in Europe during the 1920’s.

Cyclorama
See Panorama

Cyko Paper
Cyko paper is a blue light sensitive, silver chloride photo paper introduced in 1904 by the Columbia Photo Paper Company. In 1907 they became the Ansco Company and produced this paper until the company merged with Agfa Products of IG Farben in 1928. Cyko paper had poor light sensitivity and was used for contact printing.

Cylinder Press
A press that uses a hard metal cylinder to provide pressure to transfer an image from a printing plate onto a sheet of paper is known as a cylinder press. These presses came in many different manifestations of types and sizes to accomplish a wide variety of tasks. Most of these presses were steam powered throughout the 19th century. They evolved into the rotary press where the plate migrated from the press bed onto the cylinder itself.