Postcard from Berlin

Wish you were Hier! Greetings from Germany where this week Broken Clock attended the Bar Convent in Berlin to mix, mingle and muddled with some of the World’s most exciting bartenders.

We enjoyed an enthusiastic reception for our Lingering Vodka and gathered plenty of inspiration to send home to England and spotted this fabulous vintage postbox too. The golden age of the picture postcard started in the mid 1890s, made popular by the ‘French Postcard’ craze featuring photos of the newly constructed Eiffel Tower and risqué nude French ladies.

However the first known of instance of a postcard ever being sent was in Fulham, England in 1840 when writer, Theodore Hook, sent a hand painted card in the Royal Mail adorned one of the newly issued Penny Black postage stamps.

He actually sent the postcard to himself as a practical joke to the local postal staff... the card featured a jovial caricature of workers at the postal service.

Mr Hook had already made a reputation for himself as a notorious practical joker throughout the Georgian period.

His most infamous prank was the Berners Street Hoax in 1809 where he made a wager with his friend Samuel Beazley, that he could make any house in London the most talked about address in society.

To prove his point he sent thousands of letters out under the name of Mrs Tottenham of 54 Berners Street asking for deliveries, visitors and assistance, with a deluge of responses and hilarious consequences.