Vintage Philadelphia Print - Fairmount Park - The Rock Tunnel - East River Drive - Lady Drivers In A Beautiful Brass Age Automobile

Treasures from THE PHILADELPHIA / DELAWARE VALLEY COLLECTION at The Willing Mind. By exclusive arrangement with The Grand Review.

Print size 24 x 18, and consciously formatted to work with a 24 x 18 size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

So, is it a convertible if ALL cars were convertibles in The Brass Age?

Here are two ladies out for a jaunt in their remarkably handsome automobile at the dawn of modern era. This in itself shouldn't be shocking until you consider what a colossal pain in the buttinski driving was back in The Oughts. That said, if you have the time look up Alice Ramsey who jumped into her 1909 Maxwell with her teenage sister and her husband's two aunts and drove from Manhattan to the West Coast at a time when there were no roads over much of the country, and no one in the car other than 22 year old Alice could drive.

Many of the prints we create have an over the top feel to them and we're good with that, but we also work out some rather subtle prints as well, so long as they're visually strong and carry you into a moment. For those of you who have spent time on East River Drive, now Kelly Drive, you know this stone tunnel and have likely strolled or biked around the edges along the Schuylkill River.

I helped the Atwater-Kent Museum move a number of Delaware Valley specific gems from their collection around their warehouse storage in the early 90s and remember, very fondly, moving a big shield shaped wooden speed limit sign that had originally hung along the River Drive. Limit... 15 miles per hour.

Lastly, what prompted me to pull this from our leaning tower of yet-to-be-restored images and fast tracking it through our process all of a sudden was hearing a news item on NPR about the struggle of women in Saudi Arabia just to be able to drive in a society where that is treated like a sin that must be immediately punished. I mean to sent a copy of this to the Saudi embassy here, and to our ambassador there. Not as a nyaah nyaah (gotta love the English language!) but as a quiet reminder that we've been doing this for well over 100 years and the Earth didn't open up and swallow us, though I suppose the tunnel suggests that MIGHT have happened. 

***UPDATE!!!***

This car is a 1904 Searchmont, made in Philadelphia! Please see the 2nd image which we are adding purely for reference and fun!

• 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.