The hand-painted design on the postcard shows an image of post office clerks sitting around a giant ink well.

The front features a hand-drawn colour illustration showing a gathering of caricatured postal clerks with huge pens seated around an enlarged inkwell marked "Official."

[1] On the back is inscribed "Theodore Hook Esq, Fulham"; a Penny Black stamp is affixed to the top right as postage.

[4][5][6] Hook presumably intended the card as a humorous practical joke poking fun at the postal workers who would have processed it.

[7][8][9] In 2001 an expert discovered the postcard in a stamp collection and, putting together the sequence of historical events, realised that it had likely been made and mailed by Hook.