Who moved the lights on the Fitzgerald shop front?

[Des_Beechey]

Below is a very nice postcard showing the G.P. Fitzgerald shop in Collins Street. Note the two lamps on the front.

Fitz2.jpg (175.84 KiB) Viewed 865 times

Now here is a second card for the same shop. This was published by a different publisher, from a different photograph. But in this card the lamps are in a different position so they do not obscure the company name.

Fitz1F.jpg (375.6 KiB) Viewed 865 times

Not only are the lamps in a different position, but they are different lamps. And they seem to be attached to the window frame in an unlikely manner.

Not unreasonable, perhaps. There must have been a renovation between the two photographs being taken. But the unlikely attachment of the lamps in the second photograph shows a bit of a fiddle occurred. But why?

We now have access to the correspondence in the State Archives between Walch and Sons in Hobart and their printer in Germany. It is a detailed and fascinating account of how they ordered their cards to be printed. The bottom card was ordered by Walch & Sons for G.P. Fitzgerald on 4 Sept 1906. In part, the letter said:

We send you a plain silver print original photograph of the business premised of G.P. Fitzgerald & Co. We also send you an architects drawing coloured in. The red brickwork to be about the colour of the ribbon attached to the drawing.
Please arrange for the firm's full name to appear on the facia. You will see by the original photograph that the Electric Lamps block up the lettering.
Please print 5,000 cards in your Autochrome Substitute process.

So the photo Walch's sent had the lamps in the same position as the first card, but they wanted them moved to show the full company name!

Several interesting points. FIrstly, a b&w photograph was supplied, from which the printer had to produce a coloured postcard. Colour photography had not yet been invented, so a colourist had to follow the instructions given about colour when making the printing plates. Secondly, the number of cards requested was 5000, in contrast to the usual 2000 that Walch normally requested for their own cards. So we would expect the Fitzgerald card to be fairly common, but it is rarely seen.

The back of the card (not shown) is in typical C.G. Roder style, with printers number 96096. Most Walch postcards were printed by C.G. Roder, and their numbers fit into series of Roder numbers, but this one was a one-off special.

[Postagedues]

Edwardian photoshop then?