Greeting cards began to gain popularity around the end of the 1800s. The hand-made cards of days-gone-by were first sold commercially in the 1840s by Esther A. Howland, who is credited with the first pre-made Valentine. Collectors of fine art most likely hold among their collections some of the first greeting cards that were truly individual works of art.
Greeting cards gained popularity during a time when the postal rates were increasing for letters, but staying low for cards. Also, the availability of pre-written sentiments during the Victorian era reduced the need for people to demonstrate emotion in their own writing.
The first Christmas card came about at nearly the same time as the first Valentine's Day card. In 1844, W. C. T. Dobson sent out a hand-drawn sketch as a Christmas greeting, instead of his usual Christmas letter. Dobson was the head of the Birmingham School of Design, and many followed his lead developing what is now known as a Christmas Card.
The production process for the first greeting cards was much different from the widely-available and relatively inexpensive 4-color process printing that we use today. Artists would use lithograph machines to make color prints of their artwork.
Again, the lithography process was greatly different from what we use today. Artists would have to recreate the art onto limestone using ink or grease crayons – one color per stone. The stones were then used one at a time to recreate the artists work. The same type of process was used to create greeting cards in mass-quantity beginning in the mid-1800s.
Because this process proved pricey and time-consuming for the generation of commercial greeting cards, new technology was developed in order to alleviate the expense. During the mid-1800s Charles Goodall & Son, London began to expand the offerings of cards and to produce them in never-before seen quantities. Obviously, the less-expensive production techniques made the cards more popular than ever before.
Although greeting cards were quickly becoming widely-available they mailing of greeting cards did not become a common practice until somewhere around 1870 when both England and the United States instituted a national “penny post” system for the mailing of cards and letters through the countries.
In the late 1800s – greeting card sales were recorded to be in the millions with the advent of cheaper postage and mass-production techniques.
Those numbers have increased exponentially over the years because there are now many more occasions for sending greeting cards. When it was common in the early 1900s to send Birthday, Christmas and Valentines Day cards, we are now sending cards for any occasion. Not to mention blank greeting cards – in case there is an occasion that the card-manufacturers have missed.