The following series of six 'Halloween Greetings’ postcards were published about 1920 by the Stecher Lithograph Co. in Rochester, New York (Stecher was a German who moved to Rochester in 1870). The artist 'MP’ is Margaret Evans Price (1888-1973), wife of Irving L. Price (co-founded the Fisher-Price Toy Company). Margaret became the first Art Director of Fisher-Price, designing toys based on characters from her many children’s books.This sequence of six cards shows an elegantly attired couple at a Halloween Ball. The lady is masked and dressed as a witch, with a pointed black hat, and with a series of black cats and hag-witches running around her wide yellow dress. The gentleman is in tails. The clothes, and the planter and palm, all suggest an earlier period, perhaps the 1890s.In the first card the couple are seated, but the music begins and the two revelers dance their way through the following five cards, twirling, swinging and pointing their dainty feet. Though they are not doing a lot of smiling it is clear that they are enjoying themselves, but in a dignified fashion. We are not yet, after all, in The Jazz Age.
