Greetings cards go back a very long way! Both Chinese and the Egypians cultures used them as goodwill messages, and papyrus was the medium they used. In Europe, handmade greetings cards have been traced back to the 1400s, when Germans sent greetings which were carved from wood. A Valentine card from the 1400s is the oldest known greeting card, and today this is in the British Museum.
In the third century, Valentine’s Day was known as the Roman festival of Lupercalia. Young men drew cards with the name of the girl whom they would then court for the following year.
When the postage stamp was introduced in 1840, hand made greetings cards became relatively affordable to the well off and were widely used for Christmas greetings and good wishes for the year to come.
In the 1850s, the invention of postage stamps and commercial printing meant that cards could be sent all over the world.
Greetings cards continued to be hand made after the improvemement in printing methods. The materials used by the Victorians included lace and elaborately shaped paper cuts.
In the United States, Esther Howland, from Massachussets, was the first publisher of Valentine’s cards. She began by producing her own designs of handmade cards, using ribbon and lace, and went on to found a highly successful company which specialised in intricately decorated cards.
Better known at this time was Lousi Prang, a German immigrant who started a lithography company in 1856 in Boston.
The greetings card industry saw a decline in the late nineteenth century, although this was following by an increase in popularity, as new techniques and paper treatments were invented. In the 1930s, colour lithography was widely used and added to the continued development of greetings cards.
During the 1980s, greetings cards started to appear for more events and occasions than the traditional Christmas and Valentine celebrations, and today, cards can be found for almost every eventuality.
Today, despite the ease of e-cards, texting and emails, a real greetings card, written by the sender, means more to the recipient than just a message on a computer screen. Wedding cards, anniversary cards and new baby cards can become treasured items, to be taken out and viewed with pleasure and perhaps nostalgia in future years.
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