Antique Philadelphia / Delaware Valley Print - Very Early Auto Racing Image - Ardmore Pennsylvania

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 standard size store bought frame, or custom framed as you see fit.

One of the very rarest images in our collection, this program from one of the first races held in North America was hanging around, yelling at me to get off my ass and DO something with it. It was and is such an impossibly cool illustration that I knew it had to be reintroduced to popular culture and made available to have on the wall in some way, I just wasn't seeing it... yet.

We needed a poster for The Grand Review to ground our elaborate display at the AACA Fall Hershey meet, and so I finally used our boss racer in something, though I have a feeling it won't be his last incarnation, by far. For fun, the way believing there is going to be a parking space right in front of the popular restaurant you're going to on a Saturday night often actually produces one, I printed a few extra of these and stashed them in the portfolios, displaying just one... at eye level. It caused a quiet sensation as a steady stream of people spent close up face time with it. There is nothing more real than the real thing, and it was pleasing to just watch them and their reactions. Sure enough, I should have brought more...

Note this was crafted while we were in Ardmore, at a time when we were renovating our permanent home in a delightful 1890s carriage house in the historic Overbrook Farms neighborhood of Philadelphia. Farewell, Ardmore, but the town itself is still very special so we've left this print and the copy thereon as is!

• 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.