How old is the greeting card?
Well by all accounts the sending of greeting cards can be dated back to the ancient Chinese. It is believed that they sent messages to each other at New Year to express their good will. The ancient Egyptians were also said to have sent messages to each other on papyrus scrolls. Whether you can class these as greeting cards or letters is open to discussion.
In Europe in the 1400's handmade greeting cards were thought to be used for the first time. It is said that the Germans first sent cards made from woodcut at the turn of the 1400's. The use of paper greeting cards were known to have existed as far back as the early 1400's when it is believed the first Valentine cards were sent.
In the 1850's with the invention of better printing mechanisms the costs of producing a greeting card fell substantially. It was in London in 1843 that the first Christmas card was published. The design was done by a well known artist of the time John Calcott Horsley for Sir Henry Cole who wanted to send a Christmas card to all of his friends.
Then in the 1860's other well known artists of the time like Kate Greenaway, Walter Crane among but a few, started designing greeting cards for large publishing companies to mass produce the greeting card.
With the development of colour lithography in the 1930's the greeting card took on a new look. It started producing what was known as the studio card, today we know this as the humorous card, and these became very popular in the 1950's. Did you know? That before the invention of the humorous card the standard look greeting card as it was so called was sometimes referred to as the hallmark look.
Today there is a plentiful supply of greeting cards for all occasions from the down right bizarre to the traditional Christmas or Birthday card. There is a wide selection of cards everywhere you look so you are bound to find the one you want somewhere.
