Fragments Xmas Cards

Fragments from France Christmas Cards

By late 1917 Bruce Bairnsfather’s Fragments from France cartoons had been reproduced on all manner of ‘official’ Bystander merchandise—there were four published volumes of Bairnsfather drawings, colour prints, several series of postcards, jigsaws, matchbox covers, and playing cards. The cartoonist was proving to be a very lucrative asset indeed for the publishers of The Bystander, and as the festive season of 1917 approached they extended their array of products even further, the latest offering being a box of Christmas cards.

An advertisement in The

ADVERTISEMENT FROM THE GRAPHIC, 1ST DECEMBER 1917

Graphic of 1st December 1917 announced “Fragments from France Christmas Cards—Ten subjects in colour with envelopes in fancy box.” Priced at two shillings and ninepence a box (post free) they were available exclusively from the Publisher of The Bystander or at The Graphic Gallery in the Strand.

At the time of writing this article the identity of all ten of the cartoons used on the Christmas cards is not known (a few examples are illustrated here). Those which have been identified are:

“When the ‘ell is it goin’ to be strawberry?”

That Evening Star-Shell

Coiffure in the Trenches

“There goes our blinkin’ parapet again”

The 3” x 5” cards each had a cigarette card sized colour cartoon lightly glued to the front, ‘framed’ by a

colour border (pre-printed on to the card), with the caption pre-printed underneath. Various ‘styles’ of border were used, including a shield and shadow effect frame. The word ‘Greetings’ was also printed in colour, below the caption. Of the known examples, most have ‘Greetings’ printed in a modern style typeface in pale blue, however on one of the cards it is printed in a Script-like style. This latter card could just have been a different design which was in the 1917 box, or it may even date from another year (although no advertisements for the Christmas cards have currently been traced other than for 1917).

To finish off the ‘look’ of the cards, they were usually decorated with a bow or piece of coloured braid.

Inside each card was a paper insert bearing a seasonal verse (some of which are illustrated here), such as:

May happiness and health be yours,

And good Dame Fortune with it

That Life’s Campaign for you may mean

Always a decent “Billet.”

As with the majority of printed Bairnsfather merchandise, the cards were “Published for the Pro

prietors of The Bystander by A.V.N. Jones & Co., 64 Fore Street, London, E.C.”

Fragments from France Christmas cards don’t come up very often these days, but make a very nice addition to any collection, particularly for those enthusiasts who lean more towards the printed ephemera resulting from Bruce Bairnsfather’s work. Although relatively little is known about them, hopefully this article will have enlightened those of you who may not have been aware of their existence!

If anyone have examples of Fragments from France Christmas cards in their collection which are different

to those illustrated here, I would be very interested to hear from you, with a photograph or photocopy of your card(s). Who knows, we may be able to identify all ten of the cards originally sold by The Bystander back in 1917.