The art of saucy postcards
I was on holiday earlier this month to a proper old-school seaside town. The arcades and the funfair were shut, obviously, in these Covid times but I still wanted to do something a bit seaside-y.
I went for a paddle in the sea, I bought my daughter a stick of rock. (I’m not sure she’s even that keen on rock but buying it feels like a holidayish thing to do.) I also decided that I wanted to buy a saucy seaside postcard.
I managed to find one!
OK, it’s not particularly funny but I was happy I managed to find one at all. Saucy postcards aren’t really a thing in 2020. Let’s face, sending postcards hasn’t really been a regular holiday activity since the advent of the social media.
Back in the mid-twentieth century, though, saucy postcards were a staple of the British seaside experience. And, happily for Tea and Spanking, quite a few of them contained spanking references.
This one is a sort of ‘pull the flaps’ affair. The receiver of this postcard could pull the tab to allow this spanker to get to work on this delightful young lady’s bottom making this quite possibly the cutest bit of porn ever.
King of the saucy postcards was Donald McGill (1875-1962).
He was a prolific illustrator who captured the fine art of sexual innuendo in his artwork. It’s quite the revolutionary act being a smutty postcard creator, you know. His postcards were banned, seized by the police and McGill appeared on trial accused of breaking the Obscene Publications Act.
He never made much money from his work, even at the height of his fame he only earned three guineas a design. (Original McGill artworks sell for thousands now.)
There is a Donald McGill museum in the Isle of Wight which is on my wish-list of places to visit in non-Covid times when place like saucy seaside postcard museums are open again.
For now, let’s just appreciate the smutty, politically incorrect, charming world of seaside smut, brought to us Mr McGill.
