So here we have a curious and charming card. It is art drawn but there is no artist`s name. There is no date either, but hat has been arrived at by certain clues on the card.
The first of these is the long. jointed limbed doll at the top of the table away from the children and their kittens, who are also taking tea. These seem to be modelled on one of the "Dutch Dolls" which were the creation of Florence Kate Upton. The hair and face are also identical. The first of these illustrated books was published in 1895, and the last in 1909, though there was a patriotic reappearance in 1917, when the original toys used to provide inspiration in creating her work were sold at auction to raise funds for an ambulance. There is some confusion as to what happened after the auction, which raised almost five hundred guineas. The dolls seem to have somehow become the property of the Prime Minister, and for many years were shown to visitors and guests at Chequers. However now they have a new home, at the Museum of Childhood, in London`s Bethnal Green. Or that is how I knew it, for it is now called "Young V & A".
If you go around the table there is another recognisable character, Billiken - or "The God of Things as They Ought to Be". That is the one with the upwardly spiralling hair, and he was created in the early 1900s by Florence Pretz after seeing him in a dream. However she did not dream his name, she found it, in a poem written a few years earlier. He was particularly popular during the First World War as a lucky mascot. And you got extra luck if someone else bought him for you. Curiously the idea was to tell him your troubles, or what you wanted to happen to your future, and then you would rub his feet for luck. He was still popular in the 1920s, for he was sold in crested china at the Wembley Exhibition, though there he was rather jazzed up, and you could even find him in an eye wateringly brilliant orange lustre.
This all seems to suggest that the card was issued either during the First World War or slightly later.
And there is a cartophilic connection as well, for in the early 1920s in Cuba, you could buy "Cigarros Billiken" - or Billiken Cigarettes - which included cards of baseball players.