Deep South Specialties, Incorporated Postcard Collection PI/2008.0001
In 1952, Henry Wyatt Clowe, owner and operator of a packaging equipment and material business in Jackson, heard of a new printing method that produced shiny photographic images on postcards. Seeing a new business opportunity, he hired a photographer to produce images of familiar Gulf Coast scenes and other Mississippi and Alabama landmarks. For the next thirty-three years, Clowe printed the postcards under the name Deep South Specialties, Incorporated, and sold them in dime stores and motel lobbies across Mississippi. In 1982, Clowe estimated that he had sold millions of postcards during the previous three decades.
It is not clear when Deep South Specialties, Incorporated, ceased production. The last inventory is dated 1983, and the company was not listed in the Jackson City Directory after 1985. Henry Wyatt Clowe did continue to run his packaging equipment business until his retirement in 2004. He passed away on October 26, 2006.
read more...In 1952, Henry Wyatt Clowe, owner and operator of a packaging equipment and material business in Jackson, heard of a new printing method that produced shiny photographic images on postcards. Seeing a new business opportunity, he hired a photographer to produce images of familiar Gulf Coast scenes and other Mississippi and Alabama landmarks. For the next thirty-three years, Clowe printed the postcards under the name Deep South Specialties, Incorporated, and sold them in dime stores and motel lobbies across Mississippi. In 1982, Clowe estimated that he had sold millions of postcards during the previous three decades.
It is not clear when Deep South Specialties, Incorporated, ceased production. The last inventory is dated 1983, and the company was not listed in the Jackson City Directory after 1985. Henry Wyatt Clowe did continue to run his packaging equipment business until his retirement in 2004. He passed away on October 26, 2006.
Collection Description General & Tech Data Catalog Record
Collection Description
The Deep South Specialties, Incorporated Postcard Collection consists of 668 color postcards produced in the 1950s through the 1970s. The postcards depict various Mississippi and Alabama landmarks, including the Biloxi Lighthouse, the Natchez Trace Parkway, the Vicksburg National Military Park, and Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile, Alabama.
Provenance
The collection was donated to the Mississippi Department of Archives and History by Hazel R. Clowe, Henry Wyatt Clowe's widow, on January 31, 2008. The MDAH Archives and Records Services Division's Image and Sound section scanned the color postcards between 2013 and 2017, creating preservation-quality TIFF images. These were then converted to Zoomify JPEG images by the Electronic Archives section and made available online within the MDAH Electronic Archives Graphic User Interface in 2017.