by Dixie Thomason

Created on: April 11, 2009

The tradition of exchanging greeting cards dates all the way back to the ancient Chinese who exchanged good will messages for the new year as well as the ancient Egyptians who exchanged greetings on papyrus scrolls.

As early as the 1400's, handmade greeting cards were being exchanged in Europe. In 1400, New Year greetings were printed from woodcuts by the Germans. By the mid 1400's, handmade paper Valentine's greetings were being exchanged in parts of Europe.

Due to the introduction of the postage stamp in 1840 and significant advances in printing and mechanization around that time, greeting cards transformed from expensive, handmade and hand delivered gifts to an affordable and popular form of communication by the 1850's.

In 1843, Sir Henry Cole of London hired an artist by the name of John Calcott Horsley to design a greeting card which he sent to his friends. This was the first known Christmas card. The first Valentine card can be traced back as early as 1415, however, they did not become popular or affordable until the 1800's.

A German immigrant by the name of Louis Prang fathered the beginning of the American greeting card industry. Prang started a small lithographic business near Boston in 1856. Within ten years of that, he perfected the color lithographic process so that his reproductions of paintings out did those of other graphic artist in the U.S and Great Britain. In the early 1870's Prang started publishing deluxe Christmas card editions for which there was a ready market in England. In 1875 Prang introduced his first complete line of Christmas cards to the American public.

Prang was forced to abandon his greeting card publishing business in the 1890's when cheap imitations of his elaborate cards took over the market. Also, the years between 1890 and 1906 showed a significant decline in American greeting card production. However, in the years immediately following 1906, the industry picked back up and many of todays leading greeting card publishers were founded. Most of the cards by these publishers were not nearly as elaborate as those of Prang. The intended greeting was the main element and the illustrated portions of the cards were incidental.

After WWI more greeting card publishers entered the field creating competition which brought forth innovations in the printing process, art techniques and decorative elements of greeting cards. In the 1930's the use of color lithography was used by more and more publishers. This launched the U.S. greeting card

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