Greeting Card Pioneers
Esther Howland
Image Courtesy of:
http://www.robinsonlibrary.com
Esther Howland was sent to Mount
Holyoke Academy in the 1840’s and after graduation had aspirations of selling
vast numbers of valentines. She was employed at her father’s bookbindery and
stationery store in Worchester, MA along with her 3 brothers. Engraved cards
and stationery were part of the business, but not a major source of income.[1]
According to Barry Shank, there is a great myth surrounding Esther and her
work. He states, “The myth emphasizes her ingenuity and creativity. Every
version of the story insists that she fashioned her initial line of valentines
from the scraps and detritus surrounding her father’s workplace. Every version
of the story also details the immediate success that greeted these humble
homemade commercial valentines.” [2]
Mythic material or not, most sources credit Howland with selling $5000 worth of
valentines her first year, thanks in part to her brothers and family.[3]
This initial good fortune would lead Howland to develop a thriving valentine
business, as “She then recruited friends to assist her, and issued her first
advertisement in a Worcester paper, The Daily Spy, on Feb. 5, 1850. The
assembly line operation that began in her home eventually led to a thriving
business grossing $100,000 annually.”[4]
According to Michele Karl, “Esther was one of the first employers to pay
women a decent age and one of the first women business owners to travel without
a chaperon.”[5] The family business was sold to George C.
Whitney Company in 1866, although Esther stayed on for a number of years to
continue developing her valentines. [6]
[1] Ibid., 59.
[2] Ibid., 60.
[3] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 72; Shank, A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture, 60.
[4] VH Productions, “Greeting Card Museum-Virtual Museum.”
[5] Karl, Greetings with Love: The Book of Valentines, 23.
[6] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 72.
[1] Ibid., 59.
[2] Ibid., 60.
[3] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 72; Shank, A Token of My Affection: Greeting Cards and American Business Culture, 60.
[4] VH Productions, “Greeting Card Museum-Virtual Museum.”
[5] Karl, Greetings with Love: The Book of Valentines, 23.
[6] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 72.
Kate Greenaway
Image Courtesy of:
http://www.carnegiegreenaway.org.uk/greenaway/
Kate Greenaway was a greeting card artist for Marcus Ward and Company and a well-known children’s book illustrator. Kate was educated in a typical Victorian England fashion, she was mostly homeschooled,[1] but then “ completed a course at Heatherleys life classes and the Slade School in South Kensington. It was soon after completing these studies in 1868 that she started to exhibit watercolor drawings at the Dudley Gallery in London.”[2] She became well known for her work, and “in 1980 was elected a member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colors.”[3] Her first children’s book, published in 1879 sold 150,000 copiesand today there is an award for illustrators given in her name by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the United Kingdom. [4]
[1] VH Productions, “Greeting Card Museum-Virtual Museum.”
[2] “Kate Greenaway.”
[3] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 18.
[4] Ibid., 17; “The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.”
[1] VH Productions, “Greeting Card Museum-Virtual Museum.”
[2] “Kate Greenaway.”
[3] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 18.
[4] Ibid., 17; “The CILIP Kate Greenaway Medal.”
Louis Prang
Image Courtesy of: History: Greeting Card Association
Louis Prang set up a printing shop in Boston, and it was in this shop that he would perfect Chromolithogrpahy—a technology that would truly change everything. Prang had moved to Boston from Germany after the unsuccessful revolution of 1848 and had established a lithographic business.[1] According to Chase, “His reproductions of oil paintings were so perfect that many times none but an expert could tell the print form the painting.”[2] It was with this excellence in printing, that Prang entered the Greeting Card industry in 1874 when he printed and sold his first Christmas Cards. It is because of this that he is “generally credited with the start of the Greeting Card industry in America.”[3] He held contests for his card design and often his cards would sell at astronomical-for-the-time prices. His technique created beautiful cards, that is “not to be found in others, and it is doubtful if ever again there will be any cards reproduced by such expensive methods.”[4] Despite his important contributions to Greeting Cards and printing technology, Prang couldn’t best the competition of an ever growing market. “once he had opened the American market, European importers scrambled after increasingly large shares of it with cheaper cards, until finally in the 1890’s Prang, refusing to compromise his product, gave up publication of Christmas Cards entirely.”[5] He focused on other artistic ventures until his death in 1909.
[1] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 26.
[2] Ibid.
[3] GCA, “History: Greeting Card Association.”
[4] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 29.
[5] Cheney, “You Can Thank Louis Prang for All Those Cards,” 124.
[1] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 26.
[2] Ibid.
[3] GCA, “History: Greeting Card Association.”
[4] Chase, The Romance of Greeting Cards, 29.
[5] Cheney, “You Can Thank Louis Prang for All Those Cards,” 124.