Historic German Print - Wild Witches Night Out - Colorful Notgeld - Weimar Republic Bank Note - Cabaret Era

Treasures from THE GERMAN, GERMAN - AMERICAN COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 16, and consciously formatted to work with a 24 x 16 frame, or custom framed as you see fit. For further easy, inexpensive framing options, please feel free to contact us.

Notgeld.

German and Austrian paper money issued after WWI and again in the early 1920s era of hyperinflation, it was not supported by a genuine association with the state but rather issued by local banks, municipalities, even businesses. Still, it was used as legal tender for local business when everything else had slipped into financial madness. From the very beginnings of notgeld, the notes were illustrated and heavily decorated. Collectors embraced this new and utterly crazy new thing, and for a time after notgeld was used, sets of handsome, fanciful, patriotic or just outright kooky notgeld was created and issued specifically for the enjoyment of these collectors.

Some of the themes explored in notgeld are grim. Most of the styles of notgeld are well executed yet often lacking in joy, perhaps a reflection of the desperate times. Still, with a great deal of searching, one stumbles across examples that are fun as well as often inexplicably strange in a 'what were they thinking?' sort of way. These rare notes are the diamonds we go mining for.

Here we have a gaggle of witches flying the mounts of their choice up and over a tour bus out in the country, frightening the pair of passengers unlucky enough to have to make the trip on the roof. If anyone knows the folklore behind this one, please let me know!

• Handmade item
• Materials: Art stock enhanced matte paper, archival ink
• Made to order
• Only ships within United States.

SHIPPING

All prints are shipped in a sturdy mailing tube for $8, which covers postage, tube and S & H.

BUYING MORE THAN ONE PRINT? Add a second print or any number thereafter of this or any other prints in our catalog and shipping is still just $8, total!!!

International shipping is available and reasonable. Please contact us for details.

A NOTE ON OUR PROCESS, OUR CHOICES AND THE QUALITY OF THE GRAPHIC CRAFTSMANSHIP THAT GOES INTO OUR PRINTS.

Every print we deem exciting enough to present to the public via our Etsy store or available here at our studio has gone through a number of steps. The first of those is always discovering and falling in love with an obscure image, always an original that we can hold in our hands. That image is speaking to us, sometime screaming “Don’t leave me here. See what I am, what I was, what I can be, what I SHOULD be!”

There is a real sense of excitement involved, and a great many smiles and knowing grins when we make that deal and bring that ancient print, that battered photo, that scrap of ephemera that contains some scrap of genius from an unknown commercial artist home with us, knowing already how we mean to approach its restoration.

There is the heady promise of a further hunt just as real as what drags a weekend fisherman out of bed at 3AM to work a favorite brook as we start our research, looking for that great backstory, and both ready and willing to tumble down as many rabbit holes as are revealed to us to get that story.

Then there is a meticulous digital restoration that is as often as much fun as riding a vintage Moto Guzzi on a winding coastal road. I don’t care if that sounds crazy, it really is like jumping in the saddle! So many choices, so many chances to take to subtly or spectacularly give new life to otherwise permanently obscure images.

This dedication and the ongoing rush of joy in the accomplishment of it, and the opportunity to share the results in our studio and here on Etsy, is the fire of passion that keeps these engines roaring. We make every effort to ensure our customers are not just satisfied but thrilled, and we happily stand 100% behind our work.