Michael Lehr Antiques
Live Auction

September 2026 Vernacular Photo History Auction

Sat, Sep 19, 2026 11:00AM EDT
  2026-09-19 11:00:00 2026-09-19 11:00:00 America/New_York Michael Lehr Michael Lehr : September 2026 Vernacular Photo History Auction https://auction.michaellehrantiques.com/auctions/michael-lehr-antiques/september-2026-vernacular-photo-history-auction-24380
Our September 2026 auction is anchored by two remarkable private collections, together making up about half the sale, alongside a broader selection of consignments spanning early photography, Civil War material, and vernacular imagery. The Soffer Collection, built with an eye for rarity and historical significance, is particularly strong in vernacular portraiture, Native American photographs, and Iowa Civil War imagery. The Palmer, Massachusetts collection, much of it found at Brimfield, centers on maker-marked daguerreotypes from the golden age of the American daguerreian studio.
Michael Lehr Antiques info@michaellehrantiques.com
Lot 641

Postcard Album, Puppetry and Marionette Subjects, International Collection

Estimate: $200 - $300
Starting Bid
$100

Bid Increments

Price Bid Increment
$0 $5
$100 $10
$200 $25
$500 $50
$1,000 $100
$2,000 $250
$5,000 $500
$10,000 $1,000
$20,000 $2,000
$50,000 $5,000
A specialized collector's postcard album devoted entirely to the art of puppetry brings together an exceptionally diverse range of material spanning continents, traditions, and eras. The collection encompasses French-language carte postale examples, German and Russian-issued postcards, hand-colored and black-and-white real-photo cards, early twentieth-century press prints, 35mm color slides in archival Print File sleeves, and an assortment of ephemera including promotional mailers, theater programs, and souvenir bookmarks, all organized in plastic-sleeved pages within a three-ring binder. Subjects range from tinted Edwardian genre cards featuring children at Guignol puppet theater booths to satirical Punch and Judy political cards, Soviet-era marionette character studies, and mid-century American performance photography.

Among the most notable early cards are those depicting Guignol, the central character of the French puppet tradition whose sharp wit made him as popular with adults as with children, created by Laurent Mourguet. These cards, bearing the imprint "Edition Bergeret, Cliché Walery," show hand-tinted scenes of children gathered before an open-air puppet booth in striped garments, a girl in a pink floral dress standing beside a gilded Guignol stage, and a boy in white reaching toward a puppet figure. Elsewhere in the album, a British-issue "Fiscal Punch" political postcard lampoons the Chamberlain government with Punch and Judy figures enacting parliamentary debate, while German publisher Huber and the Nohant-Vicq Maison de George Sand marionette theater both contribute documentary cards to the sequence.

The album culminates in a section of larger-format press photographs documenting mid-century American puppetry, most prominently the Erica Melchior Marionettes, whose founder began the troupe in Lorain, Ohio in the early 1950s, progressing from small marionettes to larger cabaret-style figures. Erica Melchior is shown performing in a black velvet evening gown alongside a monkey marionette seated at a prop table with an egg cup, the image captioned "Slander, MGM TV." A second press print shows her in a sleeveless black dress controlling a feathered bird puppet. The album also holds Russian-language Sovetsky Khudozhnik (Soviet Artist) postcards depicting Central Puppet Theatre characters on vivid amber and red grounds, color cards from the Kolor View Press Belgian and Japanese Bunraku puppet series, and ephemera associated with the Minneapolis-based In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre and the Chicago company Blair Thomas and Co.

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