Meet Irene

« A picture of a sentraalisantra [telephone operator] from Lapijoki, a small town in western Finland just north of Rauma, in the late 1930s or so. You can just feel the telephone wires burning with gossip. The deckled edge of the photo is especially nice since such touches aren't offered in modern photo prints. »

We went to Vammala with Jarkko's parents on Saturday for a big book sale, the Vanhan Kirjallisuuden Päivät. It was possibly the most crowded old book sale, outside of the Hay Festival, that I've ever been to as it was pretty mobbed which wasn't helped by the crappy rainy weather that kept everyone indoors. It's an annual event so I'm looking forward to next year's sale as we had a great time pawing through the tables of books when we could get close enough to them.

I think there must be a healthy number of postcard collectors in Finland judging by the number of booksellers who had a rather large selection of vintage postcards and paper ephemera to choose from, including the picture of Irene, the sentraalisantra in the center of Lapijoki, above for a euro. I picked up 2 interesting collections of postcards from Czechoslovakia and Pärnu, Estonia for just under 2 euro and a number of other Finnish postcards from the early 1900s. A particular series of postcards printed by Suomen Kuvataide Oy in the 1950s has consistently caught my eye but I can't seem to find much out about the company or the postcards from that era. I added to my collection a postcard of the Rautatieasema which still looks much the same today.