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Nudge nudge, wink wink Saucy seaside postcards will be back on public display after being banned in the 1950s. The postcards, held by the British Cartoon Archive at the University, are part of a collection of 1,300 cards confiscated under the obscenity laws from 1951-1961. As part of a £150,000 project funded by JISC (part of the Higher Education Funding Council – www.jisc.ac.uk), the collection is being digitised and will be freely available via the internet. The postcards will also feature in two public exhibitions this summer – from 27 May 2011 in the old Magistrates Court in Margate, where many of the cards were first banned, and afterwards in the British Cartoon Archive, based in the Templeman Library at Kent. The JISC funding will also help to digitise 14,500 British political cartoons from the last ten years, featuring work by well-loved cartoonists from Mac in the Daily Mail to Steve Bell in The Guardian. Both the political and seaside cartoons will be placed online
with a range of teaching aids and interviews with cartoonists. The British Cartoon Archive at Kent holds the national collection of cartoons of political and social comment published in British newspapers and magazines – more than 120,000 original drawings by over 350 cartoonists plus 85,000 newspaper cuttings. Its website at www.cartoons.ac.uk already provides access to 140,000 catalogued cartoons. Head of the Archive, Dr Nick Hiley said: ‘We are very pleased to be able to make both these fascinating collections available freely to a much wider audience. ‘The seaside postcards in particular have already created a lot of interest. Not only are many of the cards still amusing, but they represent a landmark in social and legal history. They are a vivid illustration of how our notion of obscenity has changed over time – these postcards were considered offensive 60 years ago, but far more risqué material is now widely available via the internet.’
Copyright: British Cartoon Archive, CP0260, postcard by Donald McGill, copyright Greaves and Thomas.
The British Cartoon Archive The British Cartoon Archive (BCA) is located in the University’s Templeman Library. It was established in 1973 as the Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature and is dedicated to the history of British cartooning over the last 200 years. The BCA holds the artwork for more than 150,000 British editorial, socio-political, and pocket cartoons, supported by large collections of comic strips, newspaper cuttings, books and magazines. The collection of artwork dates back to 1904 and includes work by WK Haselden, Will Dyson, Sidney Strube, David Low, Vicky, Emmwood, Michael Cummings,
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Ralph Steadman, Mel Calman, Nicholas Garland, Chris Riddell, Carl Giles, Martin Rowson, and Steve Bell, among others. The Archive exists to encourage and facilitate the study of cartoons and caricatures published in the United Kingdom. This is achieved by collecting, preserving, cataloguing, exhibiting, and distributing the work of cartoonists and caricaturists, and by publishing studies of their art. Facilities for research include a unique computer database containing details of the main cartoon
collections held in the archive which can be searched online. Cartoons can be found under any of the cataloguing terms used (eg cartoonist, publication, date, name or subject). The computer displays the cartoon’s image and the cataloguing details. For publication purposes, digital images with supporting copyright details can be ordered through the feedback section. Access to the BCA is free. It is open on weekdays from 9am to 5pm, and its gallery is accessible outside those hours, whenever the University Library is open.