Some time ago, we considered two examples of postcard art of one publisher, the Alfred Mainzer Company of New York: “Cats at School” and “Pansies in Autumn”.
The still-life painting of pansies (circa 1940) was the incredibly-colored, high-quality product of Belgian printers that had long characterized the art prints of Mainzer.
The comic drawing of a feline classroom during a school inspection, also printed in Belgian and containing charming details, is the product with which Mainzer is now most-commonly associated.
Today’s postcard was published in the early 1960’s – the Mainzer Company office has a zip code.
While the Mainzer company was first established in lower Manhattan in 1938, the company later relocated to Long Island City.
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The face shows a confused scene at the dinner table of a family of cats.
Mother and Father are standing, helpless to control the chaos that erupts when one kitten falls backward in his chair.
The kitten’s cup is overturned; the drink that mother cat is pouring splashes on the tablecloth, a pitcher and other vessels are toppled and spilled, and the smallest kitten (in a high- chair) is crying.
Father is holding a knife, and what appears to be a large loaf of bread.
This postcard, which was also printed in Belgium, lacks some of the sharpness of earlier examples of cat drawings.
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The postcard was not mailed.
The Mainzer cat postcards were so popular that it is likely that this postcard was collected (with many other examples) by someone who enjoyed the anthropomorphic felines.
One can find examples of the Mainzer cats, most drawn by the Swiss artist, Eugen Hartung (1897-1973), in other European languages such as French and German.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugen_Hartung
Although the figures are cats, the scene of a family dinner would have been familiar to most Americans of the mid-20th century.
