The Amazing History of Greetings Cards


It’s funny the few short words on your joint of folded card might make us feel great, or put a grin on our face referring to feeling down. The greeting card sector is big business, and it now is just we have a card for merely every occasion you can imagine, and in all likelihood extremely you ought to can’t. Now there are range cards available, it doesn’t appear as though an excessive amount of a stretch to believe of the fact that greeting card industry actually created some of those special attractions days themselves, just so they can sell more paper happiness. These all begs the question, where and when did the card giving tradition actually begin?

It’s actually considered that a pair of ancient civilizations, china and then the Egyptians, both a version of the things we now view as greeting cards. Chinese people would send messages of excellent luck within their friends on New Year, whereas the Egyptians went a little further, writing greetings and sending them on papyrus scrolls. Like many modern traditions, the greeting car next arrived in 15th century Europe, where Germans would hand deliver wood carved messages one to the other. In the rest of Europe, Valentine’s Day cards became seriously popular, aided by the earliest card around coming from the early 1400’s.

That way of exchange more or less stayed set until around 1840. It has been then which the postage stamp came into common use, which meant that sending messages became much easier, and more affordable when compared to the intricate, hand-crafted greetings of the past. While some of those more decorative greetings remained around for a few more years, the arrival of mass printing, all around the same time to be the stamp, all but stop that mode of delivery.
A gentleman named John Calcott Horsley was commissioned to build the initial Christmas card, which was quickly then your initial official Valentine’s Day card, which had been first authored by girls named Esther Howland. In the country, a lot of the money for publishing greetings cards travels to Louis Prang, who opened their own lithography company in Boston through the mid 1850’s, as well as the cards usually remained extremely popular until the end of this century when their popularity fizzled somewhat.

That every one of changed from the 1930’s, when advances in printing and color lithography saw greeting cards develop a triumphant return. The cards evolved farther inside 50’s, when humorous cards were first introduced, however real explosion started in the 1980’s, as that’s when the standard birthday, Christmas, and Valentine’s cards were joined by those celebrating some lesser known holidays and events. Greeting cards are still popular now, nonetheless they took just another turn, with e-cards now being delivered online, with numerous analysts customizable via the sender. For as long as you can find days to celebrate and mourn, there’ll always be cards when using the perfect words for those occasion.

The writer is a Michigan artist who creates amazing artist note cards.

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