Wells Series cards by Harold H. Camburn

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Smokey807
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Dec 02, 2016 8:19 pm

Wells Series cards by Harold H. Camburn

Post by Smokey807 »

Collectors of postcards for Kent & Sussex will I'm sure be familiar with the thousands of postcards by Tunbridge Wells, Kent photographer and postcard printer/publisher Harold H. Camburn. He used to travel about with his photographic equipment loaded into the sidecar of his motorcycle and travelled about Kent & Sussex taking photos and drumming up business contacts to sell his views which in most cases were the local post office or stationers shop.

I am a collector of his postcards, mostly those of Tunbridge Wells, for three generations of my family (since 1881) are from that town.

I am trying to put together a list of all postcards by this photographer but want to limit myself at this time to just the county of Kent. I have made a good start on this list which I want to organize by card title (caption), town or village, card number, year posted (if app0licable) and in cases where the card was make for one of his customers, the name of the customer that appears on the back of the card. As you may know Camburn was a highly rated photographer largely due to his technical skill and his use of the best quality photographic materials available and his use of the Graber high speed equipment to produce them. His photos usually appear in a sepia/born tone. The front of his cards have a handwritten caption in white and a card number located either at the beginning or the caption or most often alone on the bottom right hand corner. His name most often appears on the back of the card along with his Real Photo Wells Series logo and the image of a wishing well with a bucket and rope suspended from it.

If anyone can help me by submitting the information requested and a view of the front of the postcard that would be greatly appreciated. Some other postcard publishers produced similar looking cards to Camburn (such as E.A. Sweetman in Tunbridge Wells) so please be sure it is a Camburn card before submitting it to me.