 About
The American Greeting Card
Louis Prang, a German immigrant who started a small lithographic
business near Boston in 1856 , is generally credited with the start
of the greeting card industry in America.
Within ten years of founding his firm, he had perfected the color
lithographic process to a point where his reproductions of great
paintings surpassed those of other graphic arts craftsmen in both
the U.S. and Great Britain. In the early 1870s , Prang began publishing
deluxe editions of Christmas cards, which found a ready market
in England. In 1875, he introduced the first complete line of Christmas
cards to the American public.
Prang's cards had reached their height of popularity in the early
1890s , when cheap imitative imports began to flood the market,
eventually forcing Prang to abandon his greeting card publishing
business. Between 1890 and 1906, there was a marked decline in
U.S. greeting card production.
In the years immediately following 1906 , the domestic business
climate for greeting cards improved, and a number of today's leading
publishers were founded. Most of the cards by these fledgling U.S.
publishers bore little relation to Prang's elaborate creations.
The expressed sentiment was the predominant element; the illustrated
portions were incidental.
Following World War I , new publishers continued to enter the
field and healthy competition produced important innovations in
printing processes, art techniques and decorative treatments for
greeting cards.
In the early 1930s , publishers increasingly adopted the use of
color lithography, a move that would propel the U.S. greeting card
industry toward continued growth and expansion.
During World War II , the industry rallied for the war effort,
helping the government sell war bonds and providing cards for the
soldiers overseas. This period also marked the beginning of its
close relationship with the U.S. Postal Service.
By the 1950s , the studio card a long card with a short punch
line appeared on the scene to firmly establish the popularity
of humor in American greeting cards.
During the 1980s , alternative cards began to appear cards not
made for a particular holiday or event, but as a more casual reminder
of our connections to one another. The popularity of non-occasion" cards
continues to swell.
Explosive growth in electronic technology, and burgeoning consumer
use of the Internet, gave birth to the electronic greeting card
or E-card in the late 1990s . The development of this entirely
new medium for card-sending served to further expand the industry,
producing new E-card publishers as well as E-greeting product offerings
by traditional publishers.
Compliments of the Greeting
Card Assoc. |
The
first known published Christmas card (1843), 
Louis
Prang Christmas card 