The Framers Forum

Some years ago when we had a framing shop in town (late 80's/early 90's) we used to sell copies of old postcards of the locality and villages. These were blown up and sepia toned then framed ( I had my own enlarger and developing tank back then

I retained all of the old negatives and was thinking of digitising these and perhaps doing the same again as they were quite a good seller.

However, are there any copyright issues in doing this. The postcards are way over 50 years old, but copyright law seems tighter these days than in the 80's

I would have thought that the copyright would be owned by someone somewhere. I suspect the publisher of the cards would have originally been the owner of the copyright however as companies come and go they may have been sold to one of the historical image archives ie The Frith Collection and they keep a very tight reign on their collection.

Just a thought.

Thanks Alistair. I had a feeling that the publishers would somehow have a grip on them, even though they were produced well over 60 years ago and they were copies of the original image even then.

There was achap selling his framing busiess on the south coast (Bournemouth I think) and he was offering a load of these images with his business, saying he had the biggest collection on the south coast