1848-1872 1873-1897 1898-1913 1914-1945 1946-1990 1991-2008
Pre History of the Postcard
1848-1872
By the mid 19th century postcards had found their way into the United States mail. It was a very informal matter at first since there were no clear postal regulations regarding their mailing. Even the word postcard is a bit of a misnomer for no one then knew what a postcard was; postage was just affixed to a card and sent off with some expectations that it may arrive at its destination. Today these are usually refered to as mailed cards. Because mailed cards of this period were not collected in their own time, few survive to give us an accurate history of their use. It is the most common and mundane objects in a society that eventually become the most difficult to recover.
This period saw the art of printing grow into a large scale industry as new steam powered cylinder and platen presses were developed and paper making by hand gave way to webs manufactured by machine. Lithography, which was invented only a half century earlier was now perfected and in common use. The new science of photography spread rapidly and many eagerly experimented with various means of reproducing it. The development of the photo gelatin process would grow to play a major role in the printing of postcards well into the 20th century. A great deal of effort was put into the advancement technology in these years, but much of it was disorganized and inventors did not always benefit from each other’s research. The importance of many innovations were not totally appreciated at first, their applications taking many years to fully develop. The Post Office Department also made a number of reforms in these years to begin turning it into an organized money making institution. Many of these changes were inspired by private competitors, from whom they appropriated their proven ideas without having incurred risk, and then monopolized them. Without all of these changes laying a foundation, postcards could not have developed in the years to follow.
MAILED CARDS 1848-1860
The early days of the Post Office Department were marked by much confusion, patronage, and inefficiencies. Postage was paid by the addressee and by the page, not by weight. Envelopes were rarely used for they counted as one page toward postage. It was often cheaper to ship hundreds of pounds of goods than to mail a single letter. Because postage was used as an unofficial tax, Congress was rarely in a mood to make any reforms. When the United States issued its first postage stamp in 1847 it was largely in response to private competition that began attending to government deficiencies. There were no sanctioned postcards at this time but a stamp was sometimes affixed to a picture or blank card stock and sent through the mail as a letter. The earliest example of this is a card postmarked in December of 1848 with advertising on it. The mailing of these cards should be viewed as individual events. They did not have much influence on postcard history, but as a whole they exposed public interest in their use. As competition forced more changes to be made, lower uniform rates and practices such as using stamped envelopes were established. While the new standardization of postal regulations led to better service it also eliminated the use of informal mailed cards.
PAPER
Papermaking is an ancient art where pulp consisting of organic fibers and water are laid over a flat screen and left to dry. These simple basics principals have not changed over time. Traditionally made by hand, paper moved to machine production in the first half of the 19th century. Within forty years the entire industry had been mechanized. Thomas Crompton was the first to figure out how to make paper in rolls in 1820. The use of rolled paper, called webs in printing, was instrumental in speeding up the printing process and led to the development of the Flatbed Cylinder Press. Most cards however were printed in sheet fed presses. Papers of this time tended to be made from cotton and flax (rag). Wood was sometimes milled into pulp but it produced a weak paper. Eventually a chemical process was developed to break down wood fibers into cellulose that created stronger bonds. Though it replaced the slow laborious task of grinding, it was not often used until methods of removing impurities were developed in the 1870’s. This not only brought down cost, but it vastly increased paper supply so urgently needed by the growing printing trades. Generally postcards were made from chemical pulp (wood), giving them hardness and durability. Several layers of paper would be pressed together to create card stock, then coated with China clay to help brighten the image and prevent ink absorption. It wasn’t until the mid 1900’s that a practical wood pulp, card stock, and coated papers became available.
COMMERCIAL PRINTING
Three basic forms of printing dominated most of the 19th and 20th Centuries. In the Relief process it is the printing surface that is coated with ink and pressed into paper. Traditionally used as woodcut, it evolved into a method of printing text known as letterpress where type is set into frames to print pages. Pictures were added by utilizing engraved wood blocks. In the 400 years since its first use by Johannes Gutenberg this method changed very little. Prints by this process are characterized by solid tones. Used extensively to print newspapers, its role in postcard production basically ended with advertising cards in the 19th century. Letterpress however was sometimes employed to print sharp clear text, such as titles onto a card, whose image was previously printed in another softer toned medium.
Intaglio is a low relief process in which sheet metal is incised by hand or with acid, and the depressions are filled with ink into which paper is pressed. This method produces a high density of printed ink, creating a dark rich picture. Line etching and engraving are the most common traditional uses of this medium. When used to reproduce text it is referred to as copperplate. It was used sparingly in commercial printing because of cost. Hand engraving was only used for small paper objects and illustrations until it took the form of gravure, where a tonal image is transferred to a plate by photochemical means. Photogravure, invented in 1867 was used widely to create postcards, but it declined after the Second World War because of of its high cost. A more modern rotogravure method is now often used to print magazines.
Lithography, a planographic printing method, was invented in 1798 by Alois Senefelder. These prints are pulled off a chemically treated flat plane rather than a mechanically reliefed surface. This chemical process enables a plate to accept oily ink only in the areas of the original greasy drawing while being repelled from the remaining wet surface. Prints of the best quality come from drawings made on polished Bavarian limestone. Prints can also be pulled from treated sheets of zinc or aluminum. The wider availability of metal plates makes them cheaper to use, but they cannot match the quality of stone printed images. Lithography was the best way to reproduce gradated tones before the use of photo emulsions. Artists largely used this process until the mechanized lithography press was brought to the United States in 1868. This technique and its various incarnations have dominated the printing of postcards from the chromolithographs of the 19th century to offset printing today.
PLATEN PRESSES
Two types of presses have dominated the printing trades since the early 19th century. One was the Cylinder machine. The other was the Bed and Platen press where paper is laid over a inked form on a flat bed and pressure is applied by means of a heavy metal plate that squeezes them all together. Based on the traditional hand press these new machines could be powered by steam and still be operated by pressmen alone. Much commercial work had switched over to the speedier cylinder presses, which became its chief competitor. The cylinder press proved excellent for newspapers and large book editions but it was not suitable for printing smaller items in more limited quantities. So a smaller scale version of the hand press was developed known as the Jobbing Platen. Daniel Tredell of Boston built the first such machine in 1818. This press was basically an American invention with many varieties eventually manufactured for specific needs. Many old models were used well into the 20th century. These presses played an important roll in the printing of postcards since their inception.
XYLOGRAPHY
When a method of engraving the polished end grains of hardwoods was developed, it proved a way to reproduce finely detailed pictures. The durability of these wood blocks allowed them to be locked into the same forms used with type so they could be printed together. Eventually these wood blocks would be made even stronger by casting them into metal. A great deal of 19th century illustration employed this method with beautiful results. It was not uncommon to see this process used on advertising postcards that required text alongside an illustration. The creation of wood engravings requires highly skilled artists and it was a slow and expensive technique. This greatly limited its commercial use. When the halftone process was invented at the end of the century, it ended the use of Xylography in commercial printing, though Letterpress continued to dominate the printing of text for many more decades.
POPULAR PRINTS
Nathaniel Currier became a skilled draughtsman while working as an apprentice at Pendleton Brothers of Boston, the first to set up a professional lithographic shop in the United States in the 1820’s. He had been depicting disasters ever since his New York shop opened in 1834, in an environment where illustrated news was almost unheard of. In 1840, when the steamer Lexington caught fire in Long Island Sound and burned with great loss of life, Currier quickly printed a broadside of the event and hawked it all over the city’s streets. This pictorial news scoop drew nationwide attention and orders for prints propelled his small business past all competitors. As the firm grew larger Currier hired James Merritt Ives as a bookkeeper, but his shrewd eye for the market brought them together as partners in 1857. When the Currier & Ives firm closed in 1907 they had become the world’s largest distributor of newsworthy and decorative lithographic prints. Other companies also joined in the production of popular imagery as the public’s interest in prints grew ever larger. While few Americans could afford the luxury of purchasing paintings, these mass produced images became ever more affordable to people from almost all walks of life.
Until the postcard was introduced, lithographic prints largely filled the public’s demand for images. They straddled two worlds as they captured contemporary scenes that Americans wished to see and possessed the freedom of being tied to reality. Although they often depicted news items their creation were not seen in journalistic terms. When they depicted tragedies or battle scenes they left out the gory details in favor of more palatable sentimental or patriotic content. While the ability of these images to present current events was replaced by the real photo postcard in the early 20th century, their tradition of depicting America as the public expected to see it was carried on into general postcard production.
TRANSCENDENTALISM
The Romanticism that took hold of Europe after the French Revolution found a life of its own here in America. It shared the notions of the general goodness of humanity that could best be found through a returning to nature, of emphasizing feeling over intellect. With a great wilderness before us the notion of connecting with God on a personal level through nature became paramount. It fit in nicely with the American ideals of egalitarianism and individualism. These ideas largely took hold in the Northeast, noticeable in the romantic writings of Cooper and Longfellow before evolving into the transcendentalist works of Emerson and Thoreau.
It was these types of transcendentalist beliefs that allowed Thomas Cole to begin painting landscapes when he first traveled up the Hudson River by steamer in 1825. By mid-century the Hudson River School was at its peak. Artists were now avoiding classical motifs and painting pastoral settings where man and nature coexist in peace, or images of the wilds as manifestations of God. This type of imagery grew ever more popular as the real American landscape was being ravaged by industrialization and development. By the time postcards came into fashion this movement had largely been replaced by more Realistic tendencies but its influence remains strong to this day. It laid the foundation for American tourism, which would play a major role in postcard production. And more importantly the concept of scenery was born.
THE FASHIONABLE TOUR
Europeans of wealth had long been taking the Grand Tour of the Continent, visiting those cities of importance. It revolved around a social world in which the travel to specific locations would demonstrate one’s good taste thus confirming social status. The notion of re-enforcing class distinctions through travel was carried on here as well in the tours of American cities between Philadelphia and Boston with certain sites not to be missed. But as Romanticism collided with Capitalism a new type of tour was born where the focus would be away from the historical to that of the natural. It began in the 1820’s and was known as the Fashionable Tour. Tourists would venture out from New York and proceed up the Hudson by steamer with stops at West Point, the Catskill’s, and Saratoga Springs. Next they would head west along the Erie Canal to Niagara Falls. Large hotels catering to the tourist rather than casual traveler began to spring up. As the middle class grew so did their participation in touring, for amenities and services previously reserved for the privileged could now simply be paid for. Natural areas too remote for large-scale commercial exploitation began to be seen for their tourist potential. By the time postcards were in production many such places had been attracting tourists for years and now became prime subjects for cards.
CARD PHOTOGRAPHS
In 1863 the cabinet card was first introduced. It presented a photographic image, almost always portraiture, mounted on a standard size stiff color board to prevent curling. It grew out of the older tradition of the much smaller carte de visite, and had replaced it by the 1880’s. Other size formats that carried various imagery were available under different names but they were never as popular. These cards became highly collectable and it was the rare home that had none to display. This format began to decline as the cheaper picture postcard was introduced and eventually replaced it as a more desirable collectable. Between the craze for postcards and heavier photo papers that did not curl, the last cabinet cards were made in 1924.
Another very popular type of photo card was the stereograph. It was made up of two photographs taken at slightly different perspectives of the same subject, and then mounted next to each other on board. When observed through a specially made viewer the picture would appear as a three dimensional illusion. Invented in 1838 by Sir Charles Wheatstone, their popularity rose and fell with that of other card photographs. These cards largely depicted landscapes, and as the popularity of postcards grew many companies that produced stereographs sold their images to postcard publishers.
PHOTO-GELATIN 1839
The nature of gelatin is to be absorbent; it swells in cold water and dissolves in hot. In 1839 Mungo Ponton discovered that when a dichromate is added to the mix and absorbed by the gelatin it becomes photosensitive. Once dried and exposed to light it looses its absorbent qualities. This gelatin emulsion could easily be applied to papers and flat printing plates. When areas were exposed to light and others masked, as with a photographic negative and washed out, an image in low relief was formed. This became the basis of all photo reproduction. With further processing, techniques such as collotype, gillotype, photogravure, and many more variants continued to develop. In the early 1860’s J. W. Swan invented a gelatin tissue that could be photosensitized using these principals then adhered to a plate’s surface. This was especially important in lithography where it was difficult to work directly with a heavy stone. Industrial espionage was very prolific in this era causing many gelatin processes to be kept so secret they have been lost over time. For this reason these methods are sometimes referred to as The Black Arts, (also a pun on the black inks used).
COLLOTYPE 1868
Josef Albert made the first collotype in 1868. A glass plate was coated with a photosensitive dichromate colloid gelatin, that when exposed to a negative and processed, created a continuous soft tone image. Collotypes could be printed in a manor similar to that of a lithograph. This process is prized for its fine detail, higher than that of Lithography or Gravure. It remains the most accurate reproductive printing method available to this day. The glass plate was a major drawback for it is very fragile and could yield 2000 impessions at most. This severely limited its commercial use but it proved adequate for the small press runs of postcards. The shallow plate can not produce the dark rich tones of Gravure but this makes it very receptive to hand coloring. This process was eventually elaborated on and given many names such as albertype, heliotype, and photo-type. Though the collotype was eventually adapted for use on metal for more stable press runs, the process has been largely abandoned since the 1940’s with the exception of the fine arts.
PATRIOTIC COVERS
When Great Britain issued the world’s first postage stamp in 1840, uniform rates were established for sending letters. This meant that mail was no longer charged for by the page, and the use of envelopes, which had previously counted as a page, became much more common. Before long these envelopes began to be printed with illustrations on them, ranging from simple pictures to political cartoons, some in color, and some in black & white. It is often during wartime that these covers make their greatest appearance and the American Civil War was no exception. Many elaborate covers were produced in great numbers in both the North and the South. Purchasing a cover with a political picture on it became a way of expressing one’s patriotism. There is much speculation to how much these pictorial covers inspired the development of picture postcards. In many respects they are one of the forerunners that set up a foundation for sending images through the mail. On the other hand we tend to place pictures on almost everything.
POST CARD LAW OF 1861
On February 27, 1861, the United States Congress passed a law permitting privately printed cards, one ounce or under, to be sent though the mail. One-cent postage was required for delivery distances less than 1500 miles, and two cents postage for longer distances. It was the first official authorization for the use of postcards in the world. Much controversy surrounded this issue as privacy concerns and fears of revenue loss to the government abounded. Forty-two days later civil war erupted as Fort Sumter was fired upon, and the postcard debate was sidelined.
LIPMAN CARDS 1861-1872
Sensing a business opportunity in letting the public send quick notes, John P. Charlton of Philadelphia took advantage of the new post card law and copyrighted America’s first postcard in 1861. The original card consisted of a simple design; a few lines for an address, a stamp box, and the copyright date, all printed in three colors. It was marketed as a way to stay in touch with family and a cheap means of advertising, all for half the cost of a letter. None of these cards were ever used to anyone’s knowledge.
Hymen L. Lipman was a man in search of opportunity. He inserted a rubber eraser in the back end of a pencil and tried to patent it in 1858. After his rejection by the Patent Office he took the battle up to the Supreme Court where it was denied on the grounds he did not create a new use for old inventions. It is uncertain when Lipman met John Charlton, but they were in business together when a second series of cards were introduced carrying the name Lipman’s Postal Card. The earliest known postmark on these cards is of October 25, 1870 from Richmond, Indiana. This time the front contained a pictorial advertisement of an Esterbrook Steel Pen. It was the first authorized illustrated postcard to be sent though the United States mail but it soon became obsolete when the Government released its own postal card. It does not appear that Lipman ever received his requested patent for this idea either.
