3 In the thirty-five years since his article appeared, hundreds of organ postcards have surfaced, showing a wide variety of instruments by dozens of American organbuilders.įor context, some fundamentals of postcards may be informative. Sixteen were chosen to illustrate the article. By the time his article was prepared for publication, ten society members had submitted more than a hundred cards. Cognizant of their usefulness for study, Van Pelt challenged the members of the OHS to search local antique and book stores for postcards showing vintage pipe organs. Like fine furniture, painting, sculpture, or any other form of high art, organ cases designed by organbuilders are distinctive and have identifiable characteristics. 2Īn accomplished photographer, Van Pelt had an uncanny awareness of the pipe organ as an entity of visual art. In some cases, a card represents the only remaining record of an organ’s existence. Cards provide the examples we need to study architectonics and the visual evolution of organs, as well as traits of contemporary builders and their instruments. Van Pelt, then the executive director of the Organ Historical Society, wrote in The Tracker: Concomitant to the popularity of photography at the end of the nineteenth century was the blossoming of picture postcards that fortuitously embraced organs and church interiors among a wide range of subjects.
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