I have a stash of vintage holy cards. Some were mostly from my maternal grandmother’s cache – she died thirty years ago, in her early 90′s – and some are from an interesting Catholic-heavy estate sale I went to last spring. There’s no paucity of vintage holy card imagery out here on the Internet, but I’m going to post a few of mine that I particularly like. Some have English text, but most are either French (my grandmother’s) or German (the estate sale stash).
But this first isn’t a holy card – it’s a Stations of the Cross for children from 1911. Which is why I intended to post it on Friday, but..well..it’s still Friday in California.
It’s in French, but you can probably get the gist, if you’re interested enough to try. It evidently belonged to Aline Langlois who would have been my great-aunt – yah, I’m that old (my mother was in her late 30′s when she had me, and her mother was in her early 40′s when she gave birth to my mother). She died the next year, at the age of 17 – I’ve included images of her memorial card as well, to make that connection. It’s poignant. My mother was named after her.
All images are clickable for a larger view.
These have such a beauty about them.
Oh, these are great! My little ones love doing a five-minute “stations” while we wait for Mass to begin, and I can see myself borrowing some of the imagery from these. I love the repetition of “mon petit Jésus devenu grand” (my little Jesus all grown up).
Thanks for sharing.
There was a holy card blog but the images were blocked from using. I wish there were more out there of the vintage variety. They are so original and so “artsy” compared to anything made today.
I hope you will consider sharing just one per week and allow us to use them in posts with a link back.