The fantastic book specially about high wheels. The limited serie.

NEW BOOK: Claude REYNAUD

The history of postcards began with a great many acts and events and it is difficult to specify the exact date of their emergence. Postcards had a complicated beginning over 15 years, from 1870 to 1885. However, real postcards emerged only with gradual developments and changes in the appearance of correspondence cards, which were proposed for sale and postal operations for the first time in the world in this country in the context of Austrian-Hungarian Empire on 1 October 1869.

Germany was the first other country to adopt this idea in the following year, and was rapidly followed by other countries. Correspondence cards with various imprints soon began to appear – including depictions of goods for sale, decorations around the edge, etc. It is still not clear by whom and where the first picture was printed on a correspondence card; however, we do know that this occurred sometime during 1870.

The golden age of postcards, also called the “classical period”, occurred after 1896 and lasted until approximately 1905. Postcards were especially useful in areas where a boring official-looking card was not suitable. In correspondence between lovers, for mutual well-wishing and for congratulations.

Genre postcards with bicycles were quite popular, but were rarely used compared to local views and are thus very rare. For clarity and greater interest, they can be divided into several groups:

1.       LITHOGRAPHS

After 1890, lithographic postcards became very popular, particularly for their decorativeness. Collotype, letterpress and other techniques were used. Lithographic pictures, which often depicted several scenes with drawn-in motifs and graphically modified writing, are among the most decorative.

Postcards - LITHOGRAPHS

If someone have any information about this machine, help me please.

I would be very happy if we will find more information together.

Thank you very much

Robert Štěrba

Safety identification

September 2011

The meeting in a old castle Králův Dvůr in the Czech Republicis was organized like support for idea about the new bicycle museum and cycling centre here.

The exhibition historic bicycles - Králův Dvůr 2011

Pictures are from nice meeting people around antik bicycles, motorcycles, cars and history generally on south of France in picturesque town - Marmande. Exhibition with a lot very rare machines was organized every years and these photographs are from third annual volume L'HISTORIQUE, Marmande à "La Belle Epoque" from 2011.

Organizer: http://www.etoiledargent.org/

45/A - Exhibition "Marmande á la Belle époque", France

Denmark is very friendly country for bicyclists. We didn't known how much can be friendly for collectors antik bicycles....

Danmark and bicycles

When very famous race "Tour de France" celebrated 100 years in 2003 (1903 - 2003) it was possible to buy a lot of books, magazines or papers with some pictures from history of the Tour. We showed some from their photographs with fantastic atmosphere of early races like the celebration nice atmosphere, the heroic winners and an absolutelly perfect machines - race bicycles.

Tour de France - history

Someone once wrote that a frame consists of 11 tubes and this has been true from the first years of the rhombic frame with a fork (this design began to become more widespread after 1890) to the present day. This is quite true, except for a few minor exceptions.  “A fork normally has two prongs and there is not much you can change in that”, a normal bicycle rider would say. Well, such a rider was certainly completely disconcerted when the American manufacturer of cult bicycles Cannondale came out with quite extravagant technology in 2000.  The “Lefty” one-armed fork soon began to meet with success. And this occurred both in racing and in the commercial field. It didn’t take long for the Lefty front fork to be followed by an asymmetric “Righty” back fork.People began to talk about unprecedented structural design, modern times, cosmic materials facilitating these  achievements, ....

Asymmetric bicycle

Collectors’ caprices 1 – beer steins, glasses, ewers and tankards

Small objects with bicycle motifs inherently decorate all museums and private collections. Beer tankards in various shapes and sizes are a very popular article that is hard to come by. Differences can be seen in the materials and the technologies employed for decoration and in the styles of the pictures and motifs. There are a great many collectors specializing in this field alone around the world.

This is certainly not surprising as most cycling clubs, organizations and societies were founded in restaurants or hotels and the golden liquid was undoubtedly connected with many of these moments.

Beer steins, glasses, ewers and tankards

If you encounter a special expression in connection with a historical bicycle and are not sure of its meaning, then perhaps our pictures can be of assistance.

The pictures are taken from the book:  G. Donald Adams – Collecting & Restoring Antique Bicycles – 1996

Professional terminology