SAD NEWS FOR fans of picture postcard merchants John Hinde – the Irish photographic arm of the company is looking to have an examiner appointed.

In a bid to restructure its business which is under financial pressure, John Hinde Ltd, sent an application to the Companies Registration Office on 27 September to have an examiner appointed to its operations. Barry O’Halloran in today’s Irish Times reports that it sought protection from creditors in the High Court last week.

The other arms of the Hinde Group are not affected by the financial crisis – it’s just the postcard section that is in trouble.

While the images on the typical John Hinde postcard was often a Technicolour snapshot of an Ireland viewed through rose-tinted glasses, they were nonetheless a platform for promoting tourism here for decades. Earlier this year, the GoIreland.com photography competition asked contestants to use Hinde’s iconic postcards as inspiration.

The Irish langugage station TG4 also put a spotlight on the company’s influential work with the series Cartaí Poist, in which the programme-makers tried to track down people who featured in old John Hinde postcards and recreated the scene in modern times. One of those postcard scenes recreated was one taken in Dublin Zoo and which featured RTE broadcaster Pat Kenny’s dad (he was the zoo-keeper and it is shown in our slideshow below).

Here’s TheJournal.ie’s little slideshow tribute to a picture-perfect Ireland of the past (in the postcard world, at least):