The Pre-Match Kiss

Dick, Kerr’s captain and her opposite number — the handshake the women’s game improved on.

Work: press photograph
Maker: press photograph
Date: c. 1921
Era: The interwar game · 1919–1930
Source: Unknown press photographer, 1921 · Wikimedia Commons

The fixture ran on its own manners.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Where the men exchanged a handshake, the Dick, Kerr Ladies and their opponents exchanged a kiss at the centre circle — and the press photographers, who knew a picture when they saw one, made it one of the signatures of the women’s game at its first peak. It reads now as it read then: two captains, entirely unbothered by the novelty they were supposed to be, running their fixture with its own manners. The women’s game of 1917–1921 was not an imitation of the men’s; it had its own crowds, its own stars, and its own ceremonies. This was one of them.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The Pre-Match Kiss, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

About this reproduction

A reproduction of press photograph — press photograph, c. 1921 — from the copy held by Unknown press photographer, 1921 · Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand