About Series : Beautiful Tasmania

This is a short series of cards, both coloured and b&w, published by Selwyn Cox in Launceston, in 1908-1909. They are identified on the back as Beautiful Tasmania Series, but nowhere on the cards is Selwyn Cox mentioned as publisher.  They are attributed to him from newspaper advertisement of the time.

 

Publisher: Selwyn Cox, Launceston, 1908-1909

 

Date Published: From postmark usage dates these were available in 1908 and 1909.

 

Number in Series:  The cards are numbered within the series.  There are 25 in the series.

 

Printing: The b&w cards were printed by collotype and the coloured cards by collotype with photolithography colour layers on top. Both were printed by Stengel & Co, Dresden, Germany.

 

Remarks: There is a difficulty with this series.  In newspaper advertisements by Selwyn Cox in 1905 (not 1908), there were advertisments for a Beautiful Tasmania Series of 12 cards. These were listed in the advertisement as:

Corra Lynn and Bridge

Prince's Square Launceston

Trevallyn and King's Bridge

Loongana "Outward Bound"

Generating Station

St. Patrick's River

Deloraine, showing bridge

Meander River. A pretty scene

Hadspen bridge

Macquarie River and bridge, Ross

Bush scene near Devonport

Bullock Team at Burnie

But no 1905 Beautiful Tasmania cards, with the above titles, have ever been seen. The Beautiful Tasmania cards pictured on this web site were used and so published in 1908-1909!  This is difficult to understand.  What happened to the 1905 Beautiful Tasmania series?   Were the cards actually identified with Beautiful Tasmania printed on them? Or did Cox just informally refer to a group of his WYNPHOTOPRINT cards as Beautiful Tasmania?  I don't know.