#dinotherium

Tierbuch by Wilhelm Bölsche. 1908. Illustrated by Heinrich Harder.

Deinotherium. #dinothere #dinotherium #deinotherium #urelefanten #miocene #fossil https://www.instagram.com/p/CAnUZv5q_1F/?igshid=1i8pmh8p9pdva

Cenozoic mega-fauna celebrate the holidays in these vintage Victorian era English greeting cards produced circa 1880 by De La Rue & Co; a British paper-making company started in 1821 by entrepreneur Thomas de la Rue (1793–1866) and today headquartered in Basingstoke, Hampshire, England. De La Rue began printing Christmas cards around 1872 only to ceased publication in 1885. Despite only being in the game for 13-years, De La Rue occupies an important place in the history of the industry. Their cards are noted for their highly detailed art (which is all anonymous) as well as, by today’s standards, often offbeat subject matter. John Grossman’s 2008 book Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas contains numerous reprints of De La Rue cards featuring witches, goblins, ghosts, imps and some rather feral looking fairies. As I discussed with John W. Morehead back in 2016 for his blog Theofantasique part of the reason for this was that Christmas was a much darker holiday then it is today, more closely associated with the sinister side of the supernatural. But other De La Rue cards can’t so easily be chalked up as a result of the prevailing seasonal zeitgeist. Grossman’s book records examples of Christmas Cards containing such strange and forgotten characters as “King Winter,” “The King of the Holly” and “Joey the Clown” as well as such surreal sights as anthropomorphic Christmas dinners and one in which a living Christmas tree-man appears to be making-out with a Frosty-type snowman. The above postcards featuring ice-skating prehistoric hippos, pachyderms and woolly rhinos as well as one of a mammoth and a dinotherium getting their portrait made are no less strange, but in a decidedly different way. These cards seem to have been made as a way of cashing in on the Victorian preoccupation with the prehistoric. It’s unknown how popular these particular cards were but they are certainly striking to look at today. Happy Holidays.                                      

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Dinotherium. From The First Mammals, written/illustrated by William E. Scheele. 1955.

Deinotherium from a wall #deinotherium #dinothere #dinotherium #tertiar #urelefant #tusker https://www.instagram.com/p/B-xFIfJqPDN/?igshid=4luovvrq8hp8

Clouds & Dinotherium #clouds #dinotherium #urelefant #eppelsheim #dinothere #animalart #animalartist (at Mas Rabell) https://www.instagram.com/p/B_UxRlRq5AD/?igshid=1fnyueugh58j4