What ROSS meant for Germany, IRIS for Austria, BONNIST & ZONEN meant for the Netherlands. A very reputated publishing company which printed a huge collection of memorabilia postcards honoring a lot of famous filmstars. And it goes without saying that Greta got a special attention in their products.

Unfortunately little is known about Bonnist & Zonen. And on the internet I couldn't find anything either about the history of that Dutch company. It's only well known that they were successfully publishing their postcards in the pre war aera. Another famous competitor in Holland was the publishing company JOSPE. Bonnist & Zonen (actually M. Bonnist & Zonen) was located in Amsterdam.

As I found out (in collaboration with all my collecting friends) Bonnist & Zonen edited 100 different garbo cards (to be exact it's 99 because no. 108 H doesn't picture Greta but Joan Crawford, Wallace Beery and John Barrmore; because that card number belongs to the series, it's listed in my compilation).

A very big difference to Ross is the fact that the Dutch company didn't release any other formats, just the regular postcard size (14x9 cm). And you won't find any colorized motifs. But the cards themselves appeared in two different layouts, a light version and a brown one (but not as dark as Ross was producing).

The numbering of the cards looks a little bit strange. It started with no. 107 and ended with B 493. No idea why the first 22 cards came out with a number and a character next to it whereas the following cards had the B infront of the number. The individual card numbers can't be seen on the front sides, they are listed on the reverse sides. There you will also find the notes "This is a real Photograph" and "British Manufacture" (?), the name of the company and the remark "Reproduction forbidden" in Dutch and French (the postal language).

The motifs show an excellent quality and do have an edge around. The cards portray Greta alone and with her partners. Both formats are available in the collection, longish and horizontal.

Attention: M. Bonnist & Zonen published a lot of postcards under the company name M.B.&Z. You might think it could be a different company but it's still the same one. There are 3 M.B.&Z. cards available portraying Garbo, one with number 1104 from Ninotchka, two other ones from Queen Christina without number. By the way, the Ninotchka card is the only one without an edge.

Because I am still missing a lot of cards regarding that company, I would be grateful if you could help illustrating our list in case you should posess cards we couldn't show yet. Further information about that Dutch publishing company would be highly appreciated.

As a small European country Bonnist & Zonen in the Netherlands paid tribute to Garbo with  100 postcards showing her unique beauty for the whole world.