Postcards as a source of data in hospitality research

Postcards have a long association with holidays, leisure and travel. These constitute a rich and diverse source of data for researchers with interests in many fields – for example, social and food history, human geography, tourism, ethnography, anthropology and hospitality. The aim of this research is to show how postcards from the early twentieth century provide a visual record and historical legacy of commercial food production, traditional dishes and domesticity. A selection of early twentieth-century photographic picture postcards depicting food in the context of regional tourism and hospitality are utilized to demonstrate provincial culinary identity as well as differentiation in the counties of Devon and Cornwall in the south-west of England.