This lovely postcard is postmarked Montevideo 19 June 1904, with stamps of the República Oriental del Uruguay (Eastern Republic of Uruguay).

The handwriting over the photograph makes a poetic combination, a curtain of words that echoes the shape of the woman’s curls. The text, however, is not poetic although it does link two people in two distant cities.

Mr Aram H. Kenadjian c/o Harotune Kenadjian Fils Constantinople

Dear Mr. Kenadjian:- Many thanks for your P.C.s (postcards) they are very pretty and also many thanks for your covering address. My sister will exchange with her – I send it on this one & it represents our “Liberty Girl” dressed in her costume – I hope you will like it Kind regards Yours truly Lucy A. Cowell.

Please let me know if you would like some addresses in France as I have some.

It’s sweet to think of a (probably American) woman in Montevideo writing to a Turkish man in Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. But my question is – how did the postcard come to be in a secondhand bookshop in Melbourne, 109 years later?

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