Here we have a hyacinth, one of the most fragrant of all flowers, and also available in many shades, mostly on the red spectrum, plus blue, and white. You may think of them as a Christmas flower, but their actual time to flower is about now, in spring; the Christmas ones having been grown under artificial conditions, making them believe that it is time to flower when it is not, a strange business involving keeping them in the dark and cold, mimicking the winter.
This picture may look a little blurry, but there is a reason, for it is not a card, it is a silk. The idea of these silks was for the recipient, usually a lady, to use them in their needlework, and sew them on to a cushion or other soft item. The back suggests "...Tea Cosies, Table Centres, Chair Backs, and a great variety of similar articles." This was accomplished by first removing the paper backing - and throwing it away, which is why so many silks have no backs.
Most of these silks show the floral beauty on a plain white background, but three, oddly, are coloured. Two of these are on a plain coloured square background which leaves white borders on each side, "Dorothy Rose" backed by blue and "Marguerite" by grey. However the third card, "Lily" is entirely different, having a background of lilies, almost obscuring a green background, and also having black marginal lines between the picture and the borders.
Now, in case you were wondering, yes this is the same "My Weekly" which is still going strong. though it was first published as a magazine in April 1910, and, before that, as a newspaper. However, this card says that it is "The Girl`s Favourite Paper", whereas today we know it as a woman`s magazine, which still retains an olde-world charm, and is nowhere near as sensational as many of the modern women`s magazines have become.
It was published by David Couper Thomson, who is better known by his initials, D.C. Thomson. However, our Trade Indexes file it under "M" for "My Weekly", and not under the publisher`s name. This is probably because only "My Weekly" appears on the silk - and maybe because few male collectors would have had a copy of that magazine to hand to look at and realise.
The set is first listed in our original British Trade Index with a numbered list, though the cards are not numbered. I have therefore replaced the numbers with a dot, but retained the same alphabetical order.
They are catalogued as :
FLORAL BEAUTIES. Sm. 70 x 46. See No.2 under D.21. Unnd. (12) MYW-1
- Carnation
- Dorothy Rose
- Geranium
- Hyacinth
- Iris
- Lilac
- Lily
- Marguerite
- Pansy
- Poppy
- Rose
- Violet
D.21 does not tell of another issuer, as you may suspect, it merely lists all the silk fronted issues, twenty-three of them, which were issued with a range of periodicals.
In our updated British Trade Index, the set appears only slightly differently, as :
FLORAL BEAUTIES. 1914. 70 x 46. Paper backed silks. Unnd. (12). See HM-82 ... MYW-020
HM-82 is the modern trade handbook and it lists the names of the silks, as above.