Sunday Travels #1: The Netherlands (General Views)

A Brief Introduction to “Sunday Travels”

This series on The Netherlands is the first in an ongoing weekly series that will focus on various travel stereoviews. My wife has “encouraged” me to thin out the boxes upon boxes I have lying about. Boxes of stereoscopic treasures which happen to be cluttering up our ~~microscopic~~ smallish Brooklyn ~~shoebox~~ flat. Thus, I’ve begun looking through what I actually have. What I have, admittedly, is too much stuff. So I’ve begun a boot sale page here on the site, to offer this stuff up to readers before listing it on eBay.

But while digging, I’ve found a lot of pretty great cards. Not cards that I necessarily need, or even intend to keep, but great views nonetheless. And disproportionately, these are travel cards. I know people in the collecting community who exclusively collect rare views of a certain country, or from a certain manufacturer. My collecting interests, however, are primarily in Great War stereography, European-style glass views, and obscure formats – primarily Raumbild and VistaScreen. Therefore, the ones that I’m going to sell off that are interesting enough to post will be posted as “Sunday Travels”. I’m going to try to feature a different country or region each month.

General Views of The Netherlands

This month, in response to the decidedly Amsterdam-centric “Holland” series by Raumbild, I’m featuring a collection which actually portrays the Netherlands – not just one city from the region of Holland. For some reason, the Raumbild post went viral. (Here I should give a shout-out to a Dutch correspondent of mine, André Ruiter, who is an excellent photographer as well as a fellow stereography enthusiast. He is one of several people who agreed with me on the silliness of naming a set shot in one city being named after an entire region. Plus, he has excellent work up himself. Go check out his site!)

Of the two-dozen or so Netherlands views that I liked, some appeared to entirely lack context. They’re all from Keystone, so there is probably some (1890s-1920s) veracity to most of what they say. However, they don’t mention particular cities, particular subjects, etc. The verso text gives away nothing, besides that these were taken in The Netherlands, or in the Holland region of the country. Nevertheless, there’s good information here. And they’re nice views in any case! But let’s let the cards do the talking:

General Views of The Netherlands, by Keystone View Company

A view of a canal, with a boat moored on the left bank, and a windmill on the right bank, somewhere in The Netherlands. — KVC 5041, “Characteristic Holland.”

Text about the Netherlands on the back of the card. — This is the verso text for the above card.

An image across a Netherlands canal to a small fishing village. — KVC 6436, “A Fishing Village, Netherlands.”

This is the verso text from the above card. From the simplicity of the text, it’s obvious that this set was meant for children. Keystone put out a lot of “Educational Series”, and this is likely an older negative re-used for one of these.

A stereoview of a number of cows standing in a field somewhere in The Netherlands, with windmills in the far distance. — KVC V12220 “Miles on Miles of Peaceful Pastures Where Windmills Beckon to Each Other, N. of Amsterdam.”

The relevant verso text for the above KVC card. — This is the verso text from the above card. The “V” in the image number denotation indicates that this was taken from a negative produced by Underwood & Underwood. Thus it was re-numbered by KVC after their acquisition of U&U.

Some people in the fields outside a small town in The Netherlands loading a hay boat. — KVC 25683, “Loading a Hay Boat on a Canal in Netherlands.”

This is the verso text for the above card.

Two children stand next to a dog-drawn cart containing huge containers of milk. — KVC 25682, “How Milk is Delivered in a Netherlands Town on the German Frontier.”

This is the verso text from the above image. — This is the verso text from the above card.

So we are given a glimpse of The Netherlands around the turn of the twentieth century. While not as immediate as Raumbild’s “Holland” series, these cards are more impressive overall – and actually representative of the topic at hand. In the next few weeks, we’ll get into a number of more specific areas. First, Rotterdam. Then Delft, The Hague, and areas surrounding them. And finally, of course, we’ll look at Amsterdam and what are effectively its “suburbs”. I hope you’ll enjoy them.