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The Interesting History Of Christmas Cards
During the 1400s people had printed special greetings in linens, paper materials etc. To spread holiday cheer, these were known as greetings for the New Year. It is thought that in the 1800s some of the very first Christmas greeting cards were done by school children. These were handwritten heartfelt messages written on sheets of large paper with borders that were elegantly cut out or had fancy detailing. Students then included their warmest holiday wishes and their other news to their friends and their family in these notes. During this same time people started using fancy stationary with matching envelope sets for their correspondences. These came in an array of designs and color combinations. Today's greeting cards as we know them did not come about until some of the first were printed within Christmas 1843 holiday season. A man named Sir Henry Cole can be thanked for this. He tired of always having handwritten all his greetings or his holiday wishes to all his friends and family. He asked a good friend of his to remedy this for him. He wanted one card made in duplicate over and over to send that conveyed the exact same message to all those on his list of correspondence. This friends name was Mr. John Calcott Horsley. He developed over 1,500 duplicates of the card and he then hand painted and printed them to become the very first Christmas card available to all commercially. More people caught on to this wonderful idea as the postal service was becoming even more widespread. One card manufacturer called Raphael Tuck and Sons incorporated this boom into their most profitable business venture. They started printing cards in an assortment of designs, occasions and sayings. They were even commissioned by the Queen Victoria to make the Royal Family holiday cards to be sent out by them. Their business kept going profitably until they had to close in the middle 20th century. In the United States until 1875, greeting cards were first available only through Europe or Great Britain. In 1875 Mr. Louis Prang started printing these cards in beautiful detailed designs in the United States commercially. He was a renowned lithographer in his home of Germany. This helped him in coming up with a grand concept of a process of color printing which was very innovative for his time.His most popular cards were those of special occasions and holidays like Thanksgiving, birthday, Easter, Valentines Day, Christmas and the New Year. Today's modern cards are no comparison to those of the earlier era. There detailing cannot be copied as most cards today are manufactured by machines and lack that human touch that made them so very special indeed. So here we have the invention of Christmas Cards and how they got where they are today. It is fascinating how something we don't think that much about because we are accustomed to it really has not been available that long. Article Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com Ged Matthews is the owner and founder of P&M Distribution based out of Manchester in the UK. Specialising in creating easy to use web shopping portals, the first of which was Christmas Network. This website was created to distribute business Christmas cards and corporate Christmas cards to the UK market |
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