Edwin Cole was a Shrewsbury artist, born in 1860 to Thomas William Cole and Mary Elizabeth Lewis. The Coles had lived and worked at Wyle Cop in Shrewsbury as painters and decorators (T. W. Cole & Sons), and boasted a number of artists within the family (see Darwin County: Cole Family Artists). Many of the Coles trained at the Art School in South Kensington, which was to become the Royal College of Art in 1896.

My great aunt, Edith Alice Higson (who was the first girl from Doncaster to attend the Royal College of Art - see the Higson family), married Edwin's nephew, Duncan Cole, in 1942 at St. Julian's Church. At the time she was living at the Guildhouse, Dogpole, and, certainly as of 1941 - the year he died - Edwin Cole's address was 23 Dogpole. Before that he'd lived at the family business premesis on Wyle Cop, where in 1881 he was described as an 'heraldic artist', one of the family's specialist skills. He also did a lot of stained glass work for various churches, including the cathedral at Christchurch in New Zealand after it was damaged in the 1908 earthquake. He married Alice Jane Blakemore in 1889 and I know of two children - Alice Gertrude Cole (also an artist) and Reginald Cole.

The following postcards were published by Wilding & Son (aka 'L. Wilding - the Salop Art Press'). Longworth Wilding, printer and bookseller, was born in Salford, Lancashire in 1850, had moved to Shrewsbury by 1861 (where his mother originated), married Emily Susan Ellis in 1874 at Hastings, and died in Shrewsbury in 1918.