Thursday, February 15, 2024

plethora of cards, 18th, 19th centuries

dentist card, 18th century


florist card, 18th century


the oldest christmas card 1843,


business card, mid-19th century. similar to today's business cards, in that they were printed usually in only one or two colors, on one side of the card only, and were more informational than promotional. they began to be used extensively in the 1850s.


advertising card, USA, 19th century. small brightly colored cards to promote stores or products, they were deliberately made interesting, funny, or attractive to encourage people to keep them. their peak of popularity was 1876-1900, and many were pasted into scrapbooks along with non-commercial decorative items


reward of merit card, 19th century. these cards were awarded to students in schools and sunday schools and often found their way into scrapbooks


calling card, 19th century, also called "name cards" or "visiting cards," were small cards imprinted just with a man's or woman's name, sometimes printed in a fancy script. they were exchanged on social occasions and also as tokens of affection; they sometimes were saved as a measure of one's popularity.


scraps are multi-colored illustrations on embossed paper that were die-cut into shapes. scraps date from the 1840s onward, and most in the 19th century came from germany. they were inexpensive to buy and were widely used to decorate cards or to paste in decorative array into blank books, hence "scrapbooks." this is the  19th century sticker