Title
1903 Imperial Russia Types de Russie Peasant Family Horse Cart Ethnographic Postcard
Front
Sepia photographic view of a Russian peasant family posed in and around a horse-drawn cart in a village setting.
The cart is a plain four-wheeled country wagon of rough timber, its flat bed carried on heavy iron-tyred wooden wheels with thick spokes, the smaller pair at the front. A dark horse stands harnessed in the shafts at the right, wearing the tall arched wooden yoke, the duga, characteristic of Russian draught harness, with collar, bridle and rope traces.
Seated on the front of the cart is a bearded peasant man in a loose belted linen shirt worn outside his trousers, high boots and a soft dark fur or felt cap, holding the reins and looking toward the camera.
Behind him a boy in a cap and dark jacket leans on the cart rail. Two women sit further back, each wearing a printed headscarf tied under the chin and a long-sleeved blouse with a dark pinafore; one holds a small child wrapped in a patterned quilt on her lap. At the rear of the cart sits a fair-haired young child in a light smock, with a small dog beside it.
Behind the group are birch and other trees in full summer leaf, a rough timber paling fence running across the middle distance, and the roof of a wooden village building. The ground beneath is worn grass and bare earth.
Printed in red in the upper left corner:
Типы Россіи. № 32.
“Types de Russie.”
Back
Undivided-back postcard, printed text in red throughout.
Printed across the top:
ВСЕМІРНЫЙ ПОЧТОВЫЙ СОЮЗЪ. РОССІЯ.
“Union Postale Universelle Russie.”
Beneath:
Открытое письмо. — “Carte Postale.”
Within a dotted box at the upper right: мѣсто для марки.
Five dotted address lines are printed across the card.
Printed across the foot, flanking the double-headed imperial eagle:
Фототипія Шереръ Набгольцъ и Ко., Москва.
“Phototypie Scherer, Nabholz & Co., Moscou.”
with the date 19 03 divided by the eagle.
No stamp, postmark or handwriting is present; the card is unused.
Character and Text Summary
Типы Россіи — Tipy Rossii — Types of Russia, the title of the ethnographic series, rendered in French as “Types de Russie”.
ВСЕМІРНЫЙ ПОЧТОВЫЙ СОЮЗЪ. РОССІЯ — Vsemirnyi Pochtovyi Soyuz. Rossiya — Universal Postal Union. Russia.
Открытое письмо — Otkrytoe pis’mo — open letter, the Russian term for a postcard.
мѣсто для марки — mesto dlya marki — place for the stamp.
Фототипія Шереръ, Набгольцъ и Ко., Москва — Fototipiya Sherer, Nabgolts i Ko., Moskva — the Phototype works of Scherer, Nabholz & Co., Moscow, the leading Russian photographic and postcard house of the period.
The orthography uses the pre-revolutionary letters і and ъ, abolished in the reform of 1918.
Estimated Era
1903, the year printed on the reverse beside the imperial double-headed eagle. The card belongs to the celebrated “Types of Russia” ethnographic series issued by Scherer, Nabholz & Co. of Moscow, a firm founded in the 1860s that became the foremost photographic publisher of the late Imperial period. The undivided back, on which only the address could be written, conforms to the Universal Postal Union regulations in force before the divided back was generally adopted from 1904 to 1906. The pre-reform Cyrillic spelling and the imperial arms place the card firmly in the reign of Nicholas II, more than a decade before the Revolution.
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