"Le Raphael de la carte postale", this was the definition made by Marcel Knecht, author of an interesting article in the "Revue Illustrée de la Carte Postale" in the year 1900. He was referring to Raphael Kirchner who was only 25 at the time but his fame as a postcard illustrator was already widespread through the whole of Europe. A century later this definition is even more valid. To day neither collector nor lover of period postcards exists who does not know the name of Raphael Kirchner or desires to have one of his postcards in a personal collection. During his lifetime Kirchner was one of the most prolific illustrators of picture postcards, and also many pages of books, magazines and other graphic objects bear his signature.

For many years now we have been collecting Raphael Kirchner's postcards, fascinated, from the start, by his enchanting young women. We have been to meetings for specialists in postcard collecting in Italy and abroad, scrutinized auction catalogues and selling lists, visited flea markets and antique fairs, written to collectors and merchants all over the world, and little by little we have created "our own collection" of Kirchner's postcards, one of the jewels of our vaster collection of artists' postcards. Some years ago, at least, we have decided to publish the results of our research on Kirchner's postcards in the book Raphael Kirchner and his postcards. We were convinced to do something which will pleased many postcards collectors, and we would also like this book to be a contribution towards a better knowledge of Raphael Kirchner, an artist who is almost exclusively known to postcard collectors only.

Now, in the Internet era, we think that an improvement for the diffusion of the Kirchner knowledge, and a way to exchange information about the life and the work of Kirchner may be the construction of a web site entirely devoted to him. This web site is open to the collaboration of all those who, while reading it, will find it incomplete. We would therefore be extremely happy to receive any further information and suggestion to add to the site.