A.B. Series

This is Ash Bester's main series.  The cards are numbered, the highest number being 669.

The dating and production method of these cards is described in 'About the Publisher' on another screen.  In summary, they are photographic prints published between the late 1940's  and the early 1960's.

The photographic cards were printed with a photographic enlarger onto Kodak photographic paper with a pre-printed postcard back.

RECOGNISING A.B. SERIES CARDS

The caption appears on the front of the cards, at the bottom. A typical caption is shown below, but there is some variation. Captions were written on a glass plate placed over the photographic paper, so if a reprint was required, the caption was re-written, and hence there may be variations belween editions. Most captions were written in a fair hand by Mrs Morrisby, as in the example below, but other less tidy handwriting appears on some cards..

The back of the cards shows standard Kodak postcard printing paper. There is usually a rubber stamped Ash Bester's identification, as below. Occasionally a different stamp was used, or sometimes the stamp was forgotten. A few cards were printed on plain paper, probably when they ran out of Kodak postcard paper.