The great delight of scanning is that you can make the little large, bring the background to the foreground, and frame the frameless. This is a small detail of a background sketch which forms part of a 1949 advert for KLM Airlines. I'd be happy to have it printed on canvas and hung on the … Continue reading Framing The Frameless

I have a box of old negatives of unknown provenance that, I occasionally, dip into. I have no idea who took these photographs but I always think of a negative as a project begging to be completed. The chance to come along sixty or seventy years later and pick up someone else's project is a fine way … Continue reading Bowling And Printing

There was a time when, if you were very lucky and had a lot of very expensive equipment and an antenna the size of Blackpool Tower, you could communicate with people on the other side of the world. You were a radio ham.  You would have a call sign like a mathematical equation and would … Continue reading Come In W1NKW

This is an illustration from a 1922 book entitled "Dickensian Inns and Taverns" by B W Matz. It shows one such old Dickensian inn - the Red Lion in Bevis Marks in the City of London. Being of such historic importance it was, inevitably, demolished in the 1960s. A new concrete and marble place was … Continue reading From Lion To Horse To Lion To Weeping

If you carefully read the mission statement of Pictures From The Past (which you probably haven't done as I still haven't written it) you will see that the focus of the blog is on photographs that are both old and - in one way or another - lost. Whilst this particular photograph has never actually been physically … Continue reading The Lost Child Of The Beanlands