You all know about the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. In my lifetime, these went from the poster children of outdated, stodgy views of ponderous swamp dinosaurs, to being the most celebrated monuments of early dinosaur art around. And they are not alone. I’ve made it my mission to visit as many historic, unique dinosaur models in Europe as I can find, such as Boudewijn Bollee’s dinosaurs of Artis in Amsterdam and the dinosaurs of Chorzów Zoo in Poland. This spring, I…
1900s
Have you seen our last post about these cards? Blog statistics tell me you mostly haven’t, so make sure to read it here. Today, I want to take you again to the wonderful, whimsical, slightly puzzling, occasionally grotesque prehistoric world of the enigmatic F. John, who exists only as a signature on sixty collectable cards from the Reichardt cocoa company. Quick recap: in the early 1900s, Reichardt released two series of thirty collectable cards with illustrations of prehistoric animals. All…
And it’s a proper Vintage Dinosaur Art as today, we’re looking at a rather obscure collection of paleoart from the very beginning of the 20th century. Let’s lay down some groundwork. Collectable cards are of all ages. In my youth, in the schoolyard we would have traded, and beat each other senseless over, Pokémon cards (a fine tradition that continues to this day), or football cards (maybe baseball cards if you’re in the US?). Sometimes, there’s a fad around dinosaur…




