MOUNT VERNON — Vintage postcards can be rich hunting grounds for history buffs. They are occasionally, however, unintentionally hilarious.
The present card is a fantastic example of the dangers of a slapdash job hand-tinting the colors for a print run.
As is common in such productions, there are sloppy edges not aligning perfectly, with colors that bleed over the boundaries of the trees and building edges.
The tinting is even worse, here, on the roof of the courthouse behind the trees, where the tinting artist didn’t bother to distinguish between chimney, tree branch, and sky. And the back section of the building has an extremely poorly aligned color on the roof, too.
But the thing that makes this card a hoot will be plainly obvious to anyone who has ever glanced at the actual Knox County Courthouse: It’s the wrong color.
Was it hand-tinted by some print company hack who never actually saw the building?
Or was it done by a photographer who had taken so many pictures of public buildings in so many places that he or she could no longer remember quite what this building looked like?
Whatever the case, the red brick building is portrayed as white brick, a color that I’ve never seen on any other image of the courthouse.
Was there ever a period when the building was painted white?
Or is this just as bad a print job as it appears to be?
