Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Greeting Cards About this episode Humans have been exchanging tokens of friendship since before recorded history. From calling cards to Valentines to Christmas cards, the modern greeting card industry evolved.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:36 Holly Frey? We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.
2:09 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio.
2:20 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Frey.
2:22 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:24 Holly Frey? Today's episode is a bit of personal therapy for me.
2:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
2:29 Holly Frey? In the dingiest way. It's not deep. Um, I am working through my personal feelings about greeting cards lately. Here is why.
2:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
2:38 Holly Frey? I am trying desperately, as a natural born clutter bug who also married another clutter bug, to just get rid of the stuff in our house that is hogging up space.
2:50 Tracy V. Wilson? Sure.
2:50 Holly Frey? Which includes the backlog of greeting cards. And I'm trying to set some rules and consider which ones have value and why.
3:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
3:01 Holly Frey? And of course, that led me to go, where did these come from? Why are we doing this? And then it became a history project.
3:09 Tracy V. Wilson? There we go.
3:10 Holly Frey? Cause that way I can parse it and think about their origin point. And that will help me make the rules that will enable me to more clearly decide on the fly. Do I keep this one for sentimental posterity reasons? Or can I toss this one? I think it has actually worked, by the way, but
3:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay.
3:29 Holly Frey? We're going to talk about greeting cards today. Uh, as I always say with any of these, you know, kind of wide survey type things, not comprehensive, obviously.
3:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
3:40 Holly Frey? We're going to talk about some global history. But as we go on, a lot of it becomes about England and the US.
3:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
3:46 Holly Frey? Because frankly, these are the places most obsessed with greeting cards as we know them today. Uh, but it'll be a fun little trip around the world before that.
3:55 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah. In The Romance of Greeting Cards, written in 1956 by Ernest Dudley Chase, there's a passage that reads, quote, "Who can tell who originated the idea of sending a word of greeting? If it were possible to go back to that far away age when the caveman roamed the earth and when there was no written word and probably little spoken word, we would doubtless find that greetings of friendship or symbols of a desire To be friendly were sent or carried from one to another in the form of a sign, a leaf from a tree, a flower, a bright feather from some beautiful jungle bird,
4:38 Tracy V. Wilson? a stone, a crystal, or any one of a thousand and one objects that might have been recognized as a token of courtesy, good cheer, and friendliness. And it's true, we don't know the origin of one human giving another person a token of greeting, but there are some obvious precursors to the modern day greeting card.
5:00 Holly Frey? Two places are usually invoked in discussions of early greeting cards. We're using the term greeting cards pretty loosely at this point, but those places are Egypt and China. In ancient Egypt, early greeting cards were not cards at all, but they were sometimes bugs, well, at least representations of them, specifically scarab beetles, which were considered a sacred symbolic representation of the god Capri. So just as scarabs rolled dung to create balls that are suitable for laying eggs in, Capri was believed to roll the disk of the sun across the sky. If you have been to any museum with even a small Egyptian collection,
5:40 Holly Frey? you almost certainly have seen scarabs represented in beads, amulets, and other artifacts.
5:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Scarabs came in various forms associated with different meanings, and they often had things written on their underside. This could include things like names, mottos, or prayers, but some had inscriptions that appear to be well wishes or greetings, suggesting that they were given as gifts to convey those wishes and greetings. These were usually inscribed with messages of good luck. They were associated with New Year's greetings as well. Papyrus was also used to send messages of goodwill or cheer in Egypt for centuries.
6:21 Holly Frey? Yeah, one of the things that I read about this suggested that even if there was nothing inscribed on it, it has been interpreted by some historians that if you gave someone a scarab at the start of a new year, it was still meant to convey these ideas of of good greetings and good cheer. China's history with the idea of sending warm wishes to others is linked to wooden greeting tablets, which date as far back as the Han Dynasty in the 3rd century BCE, and which remained in use well into the 4th century. These visiting cards could be very basic with a name, address, and perhaps a job title. Another type of card, which is more like the idea of a greeting card, and we would use that term today,
7:06 Holly Frey? could include more specific and personal greetings. The earliest archaeological finds of these types of wooden greetings was pretty recent. It was in the 1930s. And it actually took several decades for enough of them to be unearthed that researchers started to focus on them. These were used as communication among officials and dignitaries as a means to show respect, as well as to maintain connection and good relations. One, for example, that was translated by Maxim Korokov, was mentioned in his 2012 paper, "Greeting Tablets in Early China: Some Traits of the Communicative Etiquette of Officialdom in Light of Newly Excavated Inscriptions", reads simply, quote,
7:50 Holly Frey? "Yous Huangchao bows repeatedly, asks for your well-being." And then it includes the name and the country of the sender. That paper will, of course, be in our show notes. It is a deep and detailed dive into these missives. So if you are interested, I have you set up with reading material. An article from South China Morning Post, written earlier this year, that's 2026, by Weike Kun, notes that early New Year greeting card exchanges in China were very formal. They sound a little stressful for these reasons. The traditional card was a calling card for the New Year, and there were a lot of social rules around them.
8:35 Holly Frey? And the contents of the greeting had to be way more than just a simple "Happy Holidays", that lasts enough on a lot of modern cards. The development of the paper industry also meant these greetings had enabled the transition from those inscribed pieces of thin wood, as a means to send greetings, to more manageable paper cards. The earliest paper cards in China are believed to have been Spring Festival cards that became popular in the Tang Dynasty in the 7th to 10th centuries. Over time, other events and holidays included greeting cards like the New Year. And it was these New Year's cards that became so important that a poorly-written greeting could really damage a person's social standing.
9:20 Holly Frey? That's very stressful to me. But according to Wee Kek Koon's article, "Over the course of several hundred years, these earnest missives took on a new role as a way for corrupted bureaucracy to send bribes and expensive gifts to one another to grease the wheels of government."
9:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Eventually, greeting cards in China moved from the realm of the wealthy, elite, and political to something that everyday people shared with one another. This includes the traditional red packets given at New Year's. Those are the red envelopes with a greeting on the outside, printed in gold with money tucked into them. These are given by married people to the next generation, and they too have their own customs and etiquette, like only using fresh, crisp, new bills and in even-numbered amounts, with eight being the luckiest and four being an absolute no-no because that number represents death in Chinese culture.
10:14 Holly Frey? In ancient Rome, it was common practice to give laurel branches that were coated in gold as a wish of good fortune for the New Year. And this eventually evolved into imagery of those gold branches being used on objects with New Year's greetings, which then eventually transitioned to versions written on leaves of paper. This led to the practice of written greetings being adopted throughout Europe. These remained largely a way to celebrate the New Year and share hopes for a good year ahead with friends and business associates. Wood engravers also started to produce small prints that served as a means of conveying these greetings. But most of the cards that were given to people in Europe during this early phase of greeting cards were handmade.
10:59 Tracy V. Wilson? Soon, the practice expanded beyond the New Year. People started writing Valentine's cards. The oldest Valentine card on record is a small piece of paper written in 1415 by Charles I, Duke d'Orleone, to his wife, Beaune d'Armenac. At the time, he was captive in the Tower of London. He had been captured following the Battle of Agincourt, in which France was soundly defeated by England. His wife was younger than him, which he referenced in the card. They had gotten married in 1410, when she was just 11 years old and he was 16. At the time of his capture, he was 21, and he wrote her this poem on a card to be carried by a messenger.
11:42 Tracy V. Wilson? It went, "I am already lovesick, my very gentle Valentine, since for me, you were born too late, and I for you was born too soon. God forgives him who has estranged me from you for the whole year. I am already lovesick, my very gentle Valentine. Well might I have suspected that such a destiny thus would have happened this day? How much that love would have commanded. I am already lovesick, my very gentle Valentine."
12:12 Holly Frey? We're going to talk about that translation, which is partly mine, on Friday. Sadly, the two of them would never see each other again, as Charles was held captive in England for 25 years, and Bun died before his release. He left behind a significant body of poetry, though. He's considered one of the great court poets. And he began a trend that became a tradition of cards that bordered on being love letters being sent as greetings.
12:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Coming up, we'll talk about a book designed to help people write something valuable in their greeting cards. But first, we will take a quick sponsor break.
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16:47 Holly Frey? The problem of how to write a good greeting wasn't only an issue in Chinese greeting card history. A lot of people have struggled with what to write in cards because not everyone was as good with words as the Duc d'Orion. In 1669, a book called A Valentine Writer was published, and it featured a collection of verses that someone who might be struggling with what to write on a card could use. It also featured a printed Valentine on its frontispiece, and this is widely believed to be the first printed Valentine.
17:20 Tracy V. Wilson? The first standalone pre-printed Valentine's card is really not known with certainty, but there is one candidate that was submitted to the BBC by the Castle Museum York. And this card features a very ornate floral border that's been punched to look like lace and a central image of a woman in a blue dress. The interior of this printed message reads, quote, "Since on this ever happy day, all natures full of love and play, yet harmless still if my design tis but to be your Valentine." That was printed in January 1797 in London. The card that is in the Castle Museum's collection also includes a handwritten note
18:05 Tracy V. Wilson? on the card, and that sounds maybe less romantic, a little more annoyed, perturbed, maybe. We can take a look, though. It reads, quote, "Mr. Brown, as I have repeatedly requested you to come, I think you must have some reason for not complying with my request, but as I have something particular to say to you, I could wish you make it all agreeable to come on Sunday next without fail. And in doing, you will oblige your well-wisher, Catherine Mossday."
18:44 Holly Frey? Yeah, we don't know what that was about.
18:46 Tracy V. Wilson? I'm very curious what was going on between Catherine Mossday and Mr. Brown.
18:52 Holly Frey? Yeah, Mr. Brown, did she love you and it was unrequited? Or did you owe her money? I don't know. I can write a whole thing. Even with books like A Valentine Writer and The Rise of Cards with Pre-Printed Sentiments, Valentine cards were still something that was considered a bit of a luxury. It actually wasn't until the 1800s, when Britain's uniform penny post made the cost of sending such cards something that was in the grasp of more of the population.
19:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Christmas cards actually came a bit later in the game. This was not because people were not sending Christmas greetings, but the tradition in England and other parts of Europe was to send Christmas letters to friends and loved ones to share wishes for the good holidays and a prosperous new year and to catch people up on the happenings in your life. Just like modern Christmas or end of year letters tend to be for people who are more motivated than me to send such things. But in 1843, that changed thanks to Henry Cole.
19:58 Holly Frey? As the Christmas season of 1843 approached, Cole, who was a public records office administrator, was experiencing a bit of dread at the thought of writing Christmas letters because he was very fortunate and he had a wide circle of friends. And that meant he needed to write a lot of letters. And he was also just tight on time. He was already receiving letters from other people, but he couldn't imagine ever being able to respond to them all. It would have been considered very impolite not to do so. So he came up with an idea. Rather than do the very impolite thing of leaving a letter unanswered, he thought he could maybe commission an artist to create something that could be printed in bulk, so he could send the same thing to everyone and streamline
20:42 Holly Frey? his holiday correspondence responsibilities. And the artist that he asked was J.C. Horsley. Horsley was quite famous as a painter, even though in 1843, he was still just 26. He had, at that point, exhibited a number of paintings at the Royal Academy. He had won a number of accolades. Even so, his reputation was not as impressive as it would one day become.
21:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Cole gave Horsley a brief on what he had in mind for an image. He wanted a family sitting down to a holiday feast. But he also wanted to depict them doing good works and helping the less fortunate. So Horsley came up with a three-part image. The central and largest section features the feast, and then it is separated from each side by a framework of wood and foliage. In the left section, we see a man handing out food to a woman and child. And then the right section depicts a woman draping a blanket or a cloak around another woman. A drape of fabric beneath that main image of the feast reads, "A Merry
21:46 Tracy V. Wilson? Christmas and a Happy New Year to you." And at the top was a line that just said, "Two" and a blank for the name of the recipient.
21:55 Holly Frey? Cole loved the result and he had 1,000 copies printed on heavy cardstock. They had to be printed in, you could say it's black and white. It was actually kind of a sepia tone and then hand painted. And the result is that the central image is in full color while the side images are in softer, more diluted tones. This is also why if you look at images of this card online, because a number have survived, they may all look a little different. It's because of the hand painting. These cards were quite small. They were five and one eighth by three and one quarter inches. For reference, this is a little smaller than the most common postcard size today, which is four by six inches. And Cole sent these out.
22:38 Holly Frey? This apparently actually upset some people, but not because it broke the social moray of penning a personalized letter. The problem was that the children in the image are shown drinking from wine glasses. And a number of temperance minded people on Cole's list thought that was very inappropriate. This was a time in England when the temperance movement had a big surge. But nevertheless, there were people in his circle that thought this was a brilliant idea and they copied it and started sending Christmas cards as well, although it did not become a common practice until later in the 1800s.
23:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Henry Cole won a design prize in a contest sponsored by Prince Albert just two years after his Christmas card debuted. And he was instrumental in conceptualizing and mounting of the 1851 Great Exhibition, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum. He was knighted in 1875.
23:33 Holly Frey? Yeah, he was pretty interesting. Greeting cards became popular in the U.S. very shortly after they did in England. And one of the first entrepreneurs to really take advantage of the interest that people had in this new way to let people know you were thinking of them was a woman from Worcester, Massachusetts named Esther Howland. After Esther graduated from Mount Holyoke in 1847, she founded her own business after receiving a Valentine card from England. I read one account that said this card came from one of her father's associates. She had the idea that she could design and sell her own Valentine cards and then have her brother, who worked for the family business, take orders for them whenever he went on sales calls.
24:17 Holly Frey? His first time out, it's said that Esther had a goal that he would get $200 worth of orders for them. And then when he came home, he had actually had $5,000 worth of orders, which is quite significant. These are really lovely little art pieces. They often combined fabric and lace with paper to create ornate designs that contained little poems as the greeting. For the first batch of samples they had used for those sales calls, Esther had made them by herself after convincing her father to get her all the needed supplies. But as those huge orders rolled in, she knew she needed a staff to keep up. And she's sometimes described as having actually created the first assembly line because she hired several other women, friends of hers,
25:00 Holly Frey? and each of them had a specific component of the card that they were responsible for adding.
25:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Esther wasn't the first person in the US to produce Valentine cards, but she was the first to create a line that felt special and could compete with the ones that were imported from Europe. By 1850, her line had expanded and her company was advertising a whole product line, which ranged in price from five cents to a dollar. Her most expensive cards had tiny springs tucked in between layers of lace and printed imagery. So when you pulled them out of the envelope, they'd sort of fluff up and create a luxe three-dimensional shadow box effect. Others in the premium category had layers and layers of silk and lace that could be unfolded and reveal a beautiful picture inside.
25:50 Tracy V. Wilson? Soon she expanded to make cards for other occasions like Christmas, New Year's, and birthdays.
25:56 Holly Frey? Howland really drove the development of the greeting card industry in the US in its earliest phase. Her company, which became the New England Valentine Company in the 1870s, produced cards and also books. The New England Valentine Company's Valentine Verse Book, for example, was a book of decoratively printed poems so that consumers could replace the verse in a purchased Valentine if they felt that it did not suit their needs. They could just find a better one in Howland's book and then cut it out and paste it over the one that the card came printed with. Esther did eventually sell her company in 1880. That was so that she could take care of her father full-time. He became quite ill
26:36 Holly Frey? as he got older. And then by the time she died in 1904, the greeting card was a standard part of holiday culture in the US.
26:45 Tracy V. Wilson? We'll talk about the early days of Christmas cards in the US after we hear from some of the sponsors that keep the show going.
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27:27 Tracy V. Wilson? For any small business owner, there's a moment when you realize the next hire could be the difference between staying busy and actually growing. The challenge is finding the right person without wasting time sorting through candidates who aren't the right fit. That's where Indeed Sponsored Jobs comes in. When workplace chaos hits and you need someone who can step in and make a difference, this is a job for Sponsored Jobs. It helps put your job in front of candidates who match the criteria that matter most to you, whether that's skills, experience, certifications, or location. And you're certainly not alone in using Indeed. Join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits your needs. Their needs. That's millions of businesses turning to Indeed to help solve hiring
28:10 Tracy V. Wilson? challenges and find people who can help drive results. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. Get your $75 sponsored job credit today at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
28:37 Holly Frey? We've all done it. Tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends. Not to cancel them,
29:21 Holly Frey? not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
29:40 Holly Frey? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A. have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your
30:16 Tracy V. Wilson? Elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
30:46 Holly Frey? While Esther was building her Valentine card business, another entrepreneur, Louis Prong, was focused on Christmas cards. Prong was born in Breslau, Prussia, and he moved to the US in the 1850s after being involved in some revolutionary activity in Prussia. He settled in Boston and started working as a lithographer. He had learned the lithography trade from his father because the family couldn't afford to send him to school. In the early 1850s, Prong created illustrations for Gleason Magazine before starting the lithography company Prong & Mayer with his partner Julius Mayer in 1856. He took over the business entirely four years later, and it became L. Prong & Company.
31:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Prong's company printed things like advertisement art and business cards, and he continued to learn the latest techniques to ensure his company was producing top-quality work. In 1864, Prong traveled to Germany to learn a new technique, and that was chromolithography. Up until that point, all lithographs worked the same way that Cole and Horsley had done with their cards. They were printed in two-color black and white, or in sepia, and then they were hand painted. But chromolithography removed the need for the hand painting step, and so you could use multiple lithographic plates to add the color. Prong returned to Boston, completely inspired by the possibilities of this new technique.
32:13 Holly Frey? And right from the beginning, he really wanted to push chromolithography to create incredibly complex images. He wasn't doing just a few passes with color plates. He was creating these vivid, deep color images using as many as 20 plates per design. And in doing so, he really set a standard in lithography that was hard for other companies to match. In 1875, he used that process to produce a Christmas card. Prong's card did not feature any of the symbols of the season that you might expect on a Christmas card. It was just an image of a flower, not a poinsettia, just a regular flower with the words Merry Christmas underneath it. I couldn't find
32:55 Holly Frey? an image of that original 1875 card, but I did see an image of the 1876 card that appears to feature pink roses and two different cards from 1877. One of those looks like it features slightly stylized carnations, and the other looks like a spray of wildflowers, including a pansy. Prong's cards were so pretty that they gained popularity really quickly, and over time, the company started using more standard holiday imagery, although they still outpaced other printers on quality. Prong was reportedly selling an astonishing 5 million cards each year by the 1880s.
33:35 Tracy V. Wilson? The Prong Company also initiated a very popular program where it started having contests each year for aspiring artists to design the next card. This is a lucrative contest. The first-placed winner got $1,000. That was a lot of money in 1880, when this contest started. Second, third, and fourth place also got prize money in smaller increments. It also was unique in that it was open to women and to men, competing equally, offering women an unusual opportunity to get their foot in the door of the commercial design market. The submissions were displayed at the American Art Gallery, and the winner's cards would be printed along with their name on the back of the card.
34:17 Tracy V. Wilson? Prong would also sometimes purchase the rights to cards that had not been in the top four, and he would sometimes sign contracts with artists from the competition as designers for the company. This made Prong cards collectors items. People wanted to get the winning card every year. They wanted that art. It also served another purpose. Prong always had an eye on art education, and he used this contest to share information about the lithographic process with the public. His company still exists today and makes art supplies for the education market, which is why that name sounded so familiar to me.
34:55 Holly Frey? This contest ran from 1880 to 1884, and by the time it was done, a lot of other printers were catching up to Prong's level, and the US greeting card market was well-established.
35:07 Tracy V. Wilson? While Prong is often lauded as printing the first American Christmas card, there's another rarely mentioned figure in card printing who put a Christmas card out in the late 1840s. That was shop owner and printer Richard H. Pease of Albany, New York. According to the Albany Institute of History and Art, Pease had a card designed by a woman named Eliza Forbes and printed it in black and white for most likely the 1849 holiday season. The image is interesting because it almost feels like Pease or Forbes had seen a copy of the Cole-Horsley card, maybe used that as inspiration. It features a family celebrating Christmas in the center.
35:49 Tracy V. Wilson? That image spills over to the right and left along the bottom of the image. To the upper left is an image of what looks like a holiday fancy dress ball, and to the upper right is an image of the building where Pease's shop was. This card was obviously intended to also be a little bit of advertising for the shop. There's a banner of text that arches over the family which reads "Pease's Great Variety Store in the Temple of Fancy." The Temple of Fancy was the actual name of the store. Under the family, the card reads, "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year." And then there are the "to" and "from" lines that have blanks for the sender to fill in. It's not clear how many copies of this card were printed,
36:32 Tracy V. Wilson? but as the messaging was specific to Albany, it doesn't really seem like they traveled very far beyond that. And that could account for this card being kind of a relative unknown.
36:44 Holly Frey? Feel like I want shirts that say "Temple of Fancy." Such a great name. There was a concern around this time fueled by critics of greeting cards that sending sentiments in card form was really just a fad and that people were going to get tired of them in the 20th century. But of course, the opposite happened. Printing processes got better, so even inexpensive cards looked pretty good. Additionally, life got busier for everybody. Just like Henry Cole, they turned to greeting cards to ensure they stayed in touch. Additionally, cards more and more frequently offered ways to enjoy works of art. We talked about that a little bit in our episode on Tyrus Wong, which came out on May 23rd, 2024.
37:28 Holly Frey? You want to talk about beautiful Christmas cards?
37:30 Tracy V. Wilson? So pretty.
37:31 Holly Frey? That's where to look. Another earlier artist whose work became coveted on greeting cards was a woman named Kate Greenaway. She may very well be a topic one day. Greenaway was an illustrator and she was hired by Marcus Warden Company, a publishing company in Belfast, Ireland, that was moving into the card market because they didn't want to miss out on this new revenue. Kate's card illustrations, which frequently feature children celebrating, are still reprinted commonly today. It's easy to see why. They're very cute.
38:04 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1915, a family business was started by Joyce Hall in Kansas City. They printed their first Christmas card. As the business quickly grew, Joyce's brothers also became part of the Hall Company and they began to focus less on the original plan of postcards and more on holiday cards. Later, the company changed its name to Hallmark. Hallmark innovated in introducing the folded card. Previous greeting cards had just been one flat card, a lot like a postcard. But the Hall brothers wanted to add more space for a sender to write in the card. They also started hiring well-known artists to design cards, including Salvador Dali.
38:46 Tracy V. Wilson? The company still has the original paintings for card designs by Dali and its collection. Norman Rockwell was also hired to design cards for the company and has continued to be printed with some regularity.
39:00 Holly Frey? I feel like Salvador Dali has been on the show a lot lately, which is just fine by me. The US greeting card industry became a significant employer with an estimated 40 factories operating by the late 1920s. And to keep this new industry lucrative, businesses focused their marketing on the idea that sending cards was an old tradition, even though it was still pretty new. There were also charity card drives to drum up interest and just get people in the practice of buying cards. In those cases, consumers were encouraged to purchase cards, knowing that the proceeds or a portion of the proceeds would benefit a good cause. This practice really solidified with the introduction of UNICEF's first holiday card
39:45 Holly Frey? in 1949, and charity cards have continued consistently ever since.
39:50 Tracy V. Wilson? Today, the greeting card industry is in a unique position. On the one hand, digital cards have cut into the market significantly. On the other, the United States Chamber of Commerce says there's some interesting growth in the industry. For one thing, it's still huge. It's estimated to be a $7 billion market annually. That is billion with a B. For another, there's some interesting innovation going on within it. While Hallmark and American Greetings are credited with a whopping 80% market share, industry leaders note that the remaining slice of the market is filled with smaller producers who are able to get into the business because of their relatively low startup costs.
40:34 Tracy V. Wilson? There's a lot of those folks are doing really creative things.
40:38 Holly Frey? According to the Greeting Card Association, which is like a professional org for all these companies, there are two things that have fueled a new wave of greeting card interest in recent years. And the first is the COVID-19 pandemic, because as people were separated from loved ones and close friends, the greeting card industry is one of the few that actually had some growth because people were seeking ways to stay connected that felt more meaningful than simply sending a text. Another is that millennials and Gen Z consumers have embraced greeting cards as previous generations have lost interest. Millennials are now listed as the largest consumer group of greeting cards. One theory about this growth is that it feels sort of retro
41:22 Holly Frey? to send cards, which has appeal to younger buyers.
41:26 Tracy V. Wilson? Another is that there's some fresh diversity in the messaging, and that lets people share sentiments or laugh with loved ones through a card that feels in line with their usual dynamic. New holidays are also being represented. Some are old holidays that didn't used to be associated with greeting cards, like Halloween. Others reflect an expanded awareness of cultural diversity, like Diwali. And then, of course, there are newly created holidays, like Galentine's Day, that have become popular, and there are cards to celebrate them. There's also a new availability of cards that address more social and life moments, some of which haven't historically gotten a lot of notice on the card aisle, like for sobriety or for a serious loss.
42:11 Tracy V. Wilson? For literally any life event, from puberty to gallbladder surgery, there is a card. I have one that is like, uh, Mad Libs, almost. A lot of wild things you can choose from about what you're sending your condolences for, and they're all very silly.
42:30 Holly Frey? Yeah, uh, yeah, we'll talk about interesting greeting cards Friday. In the meantime, we're going to talk about art again. I'm sorry.
42:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, good.
42:40 Holly Frey? But this is like some beautiful art by one of our listeners.
42:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Oh, yay.
42:45 Holly Frey? Who claims that they're not that great, but is a fibber. This is from our listener, Kieran, who writes, hello, ladies. A bit of a rambling note, but I recently decided that I wanted to go back and improve upon my art education and finally tackle learning some figure drawing. Unfortunately, my BFA program was not stellar, so I missed out on a lot of foundational skills. But there's no time like the present to learn, because I would love to be able to do some fun and inclusive character design and storytelling someday. I'm just starting as of February and am knee deep in anatomy studies and have found that ballet dancers make such excellent references to work from. That, of course, got me down a whole rabbit hole of re-listening to the two-part episodes on the history of ballet, as well as the one on Jean Baptiste Lully, which have been so
43:30 Holly Frey? fun to re-listen to while I draw. I think it's safe to say at this point that everything in life somehow connects back to one of your episodes, and all of my friends and relations are thoroughly sick of me going, oh, oh, there's a podcast episode about that. Thank you so much for all of the education and company you provided over the years. I also recently went through a big move to a new town at the start of this year, so having comfort media to lean on in the transition has been essential. Thank you again for all that you are and all that you do. I hope your spring season is off to as positive a start as possible. Questionably proportioned practice sketches attached. I promise I will send better ones in future. These look spectacular to me. I mean, I don't, I don't think these are bad. They may be practiced, but you're nailing it.
44:15 Holly Frey? I, um, listen, we love art. I love sporting artists. I love that ballet was a good one. Dancers are a really good opportunity to study the mechanics of the human body, which is very cool. This also a little bit is going to relate to something I'm going to talk about on Friday.
44:33 Tracy V. Wilson? So. Okay.
44:34 Holly Frey? When we talk about human figure drawing, there is comedy coming on Friday.
44:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Great.
44:40 Holly Frey? If you would like to write to us, you can do so at [email protected] . If you would like to see the show notes for the episode, they are available at missedinhistory.com. You'll see all the sources we used. If you would like to subscribe to the podcast and you haven't done so yet, you can do that anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
45:06 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
45:20 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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