1848-1872 1873-1897 1898-1913 1914-1945 1946-1990 1991-2008
Pioneer Cards
1873-1897
Pioneer is a general term applied to postcards manufactured before the appearance of Private Mail Cards. These cards were instrumental in creating and expanding the growth of the postcard industry. While some feel this era begins with the popularization of exposition cards issued at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, a more appropriate date would be at issuance of the U.S. Governments first official postal in 1873. Although privately printed postcards were authorized as early as 1861, they weren’t actually being used until 1870, and then mostly as an experiment to ascertain their commercial viability. There was no system of national distribution during these years. Whether it was for advertising or souvenirs, cards were printed for a local audience and for the most part by local printers. New York City is the most common subject mater for souvenir cards of this period, no doubt due to its high concentration of printers. Firsts in postcard history have changed hands a few times during the study of this period as new cards have come to light.
Possibly the most important development of this period was the general rise of the middle class though an expanding industrial economy. This provided a receptive audience for the marketing of imagery, first in the form of small card photographs, then in chromolithographic prints, trade cards,reward cards, and onto exhibition and souvenir cards. The demand for cards increased the size of the printing industry, which in turn created a need for more illustrations. Many artists produced exceptional work in these years and the art of color lithography was refined along with it. The invention of the halftone screen was an event of major proportions; they would lower illustrating costs to make printed pictures much more commonplace. Innovations in photography took this process from the exclusivity of the artist to the amateur. Although there was much scientific advancement in this period, it was also a time of many economic ups and downs, and certain pieces remained missing to create a true postcard revolution.
PRIVATE CARDS 1873-1898
The Lipman card inspired a new type of privately printed card that ran concurrent with government postals. They contained the words Correspondence Card, Mail Card, or Souvenir Card on their backs. All these privately issued cards required two-cent postage if there were any writing on them. Letter rate was also two cents making these cards very unpopular with the general public so few were ever mailed. Most surviving examples were used for advertising that qualified for the one-cent rate. There were no size requirements at this time so they appeared in many forms. The 1500 mile delivery restriction on penny postage was soon dropped in favor of uniform rates. Even so postal regulations during these years were not consistent and many companies were reluctant to mail private cards in fear that they would not be delivered. Since many wound up being placed in envelopes or given out by hand there was no need to print a standard postcard back onto them. The entire backsides of many cards are completely covered with advertising text.
The use of postcards for advertising was in large part due to the rural nature of our large country. Our population was spread over too great an area for the European tradition of peddlers to take hold except in our densely occupied inner cities. Customers for goods would have to stock up at the nearest store rather than purchase products daily. As these stores added to their inventory many grew larger and larger, some into what we would now call department stores. To spread their reach further the mail order catalog (wishing books) was introduced by Chicago’s Montgomery Ward in 1872. Postcards also became instrumental in attracting customers over long distances.
WILL CALL CARDS
A great many business cards were made apart from advertising to notify potential clients that a salesman would be calling on them. These cards often used the phrase Expect Me or Will Call on them. Originally just typeset messages, they began incorporating simple designs or illustrations that grew more elaborate over the years.
HOLIDAY CARDS
The first known holiday card is a Valentine dating from the 15th century. When postal systems developed these cards were rarely sent through the mail because of their long tradition of being exchanged by hand. Visiting family and friends during important holidays was part of expected social obligations until the early 20th century so few wasted money on postage. The exchange of holiday cards face to face slowed their entrance into the postcard market, but as the demand for view-cards increased, so did the acceptance of the holiday postcard. Postcards would become the dominant for of greetings and they remained highly popular until replaced by the folded greeting card. By the Second World War postcard greetings had all but disappeared. Many of the holidays represented on these early cards such as Labor Day, Groundhog Day, and Halloween are no longer considered card giving occasions. While some holidays have long held deep national or religious significance, it can be said that others were created, or at least enhanced by market forces to promote commercial products such as postcards.
All holiday cards were imported from England until 1875 when Louis Prang published the first Christmas cards in the United States. While others wee to follow in his footsteps Prang became the dominant force in this business during the 19th century because of his complex designs and high quality printing. Although greeting card publishers moved into the postcard business as these cards grew in popularity, many older greeting cards of various odd sizes were now mailed as postcards even though they were never printed for such use.
MINIATURE STUDIES
Views of places near and far have been sent through the mail long before the advent of the postcard. It was not uncommon for artists to send small drawn or painted studies to friends, family, or patrons. These miniature works were not postcards but mailed with letters in covers. Nevertheless this tradition illustrates the long existing receptiveness of sending and receiving images outside of the usual holiday exchange. But in many ways they performed in the same manner as holiday cards in that the exchange itself was a reinforcement of social bonds. The giving of tokens is a practice that most likely older than recorded history. William Trost Richards is one of the more notable painters of such sets. He mailed nearly two hundred watercolors, only slightly smaller than postcards size, in the 1870’s and 80’s.
GOVERNMENT POSTALS 1873-Present
The Austrian Postal Administration authorized the world’s first Correspondz Karte on October 1st, 1869. This Triumph of democracy was popular enough to generate three million sales in three months time. Correspondence cards had been a suggestion of Dr. Emanuel Hermann who sought a cheep way for soldiers to write home. When the Franco Prussian War broke out a year later, the Prussians issued their own Fieldpost cards with much success. That same year Switzerland, Luxembourg, Baden, Bavaria, and Great Britain joined in. Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Norway, and Canada issued cards in 1871, followed by Russia, Chile, France, and Algeria in 1872. France, Serbia, Romania, Spain, and Japan issued cards in 1873 along with the United States. By 1874 Serbia, Romania, and Italy also began to issue postals. Many of these early cards included small images printed on the same side with the postage.
Debated for years, President Grant finally authorized postals in 1872, and on May 12th, 1873, the United States Government released our first official postcard. The words Postal Card were printed on its back along with a one-cent denomination. Only government issued cards were allowed to use in the words Postal Card by law. The side with postage was designated exclusively for the address, the other side for the message. Beginning in 1875 these blank cards were available for purchase in large uncut sheets, and they were aquired by many private firms who printed across their fronts. Postals proved to be successful for they were soon selling at the rate of a million per day. Prior to 1893 these cards were almost always used for advertising with a rare few used as greeting cards. Although postage rates have since increased substantially these cards with pre-printed postage are still in use. Their printed postage, once confined to presidential portraits, eventually became more varied in design to attract stamp collectors.
FRENCH POSTCARDS
The French magazine La Beaute, was a major source for nude pictures. They sold photographic images of poses in the nude for the use of artists, but they were greatly coveted by the general public. Though made in Europe their largest market was in the United States. Most of their backs are blank without any postal markings making them difficult to date. These types of cards became popular in the 1870’s but had been manufactured as soon as technology provided a convenient way to reproduce photographs. They are referred to as postcards only because of the similar size, but they were illegal to mail. Actual postcards with nudes on them did not appear until 1900 or so.
On March 3, 1873 at the urging of the N.Y. Society for the Suppression of Vice and the Y.M.C.A. the Comstock Laws were passed prohibiting obscene material from being sent through the mail. Not only nudes but also any sexually related subjects could cost a sender ten years at hard labor. The law was also used extensively for censorship as works by Balzac, Joyce, Tolstoy, and Walt Whitman were labeled smut. Almost 18 million postcards were destroyed under this law. Although the restrictions on birth control information have been dropped, it should be remembered that the law is still on the books and the U.S. Postal Service is allowed to seize your mail when suspected of containing indecent material. Few today are imprisoned but postcards with nude or suggestive imagery continue to be confiscated.
THE GERMAN EMPIRE 1871-1918
Prussia’s Otto von Bismarck did not only unify the many German states into an Empire, he took numerous steps to make it the most powerful nation in Europe. Bismarck, with the help of the country’s banks, made a determined effort to catch up for years of slow industrialization. This sudden change brought in the latest technologies and machinery that allowed them to quickly outpace the older industrial nations that had much outdated equipment and mismatched technologies from different eras. Germany would eventually lead all of Europe in manufacturing with thirty major factories, some with 1500 employees, producing postcards alone. Production would rise to billions of cards a year. American publishers formed close ties with German print houses, sending them some of their best artists to assist in card production. German craftsmen were prohibited from entering the United States by alien contract laws, which helped ensure overseas dominance. Approximately 75 percent of all postcards used in the United Stated prior to World War One were printed in Germany.
Other factors gave Germany a market edge as well, for it was the birthplace of the printing press, and it became home to discoveries and innovations that improved on printing quality and speed. Trade secrets were closely kept hampering competitors in other countries. Although lithographs could be made on a variety of substances, the hard flawless limestone needed to produce the highest quality prints could only be obtained from a single region in Bavaria. While there were attempts to stop the rise of Socialism, Bismarck could only slow its rising popularity. A highly developed welfare system developed, with programs such as Social Security that kept labor relations relatively peaceful despite poor wages being pervasive. While the low cost of labor allowed for the manufacture of cheap competitive products, the tradition of the German guilds did not allow workers to enter trades without the skills necessary to produce high quality goods.
The German City State of Hamburg, already a major port, continued to grow in significance after joining the Hanseatic League in 1241. As German collectors reached their capacity for buying postcards, oversees markets were aggressively sought out and the free port of Hamburg became the most active distribution point for postcards. Jobbers were sent around the world on the many ocean liner routes that originated here. The Hamburg-Amerikan Line eventually became the world’s largest. Their terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey became the entry point for hundreds of millions of postcards until seized by the U.S. Government on our entry into the First World War.
UNIVERSAL POSTAL UNION 1874
Twenty-two countries joined together in 1874 to create the General Postal Union. A common set of regulations was desperately needed to replace the inconsistencies of individual treaties that governed correspondence between nations. Four years latter they changed their name to the Universal Postal Union. It was in that same year at their World Congress meeting that they agreed to set standards for postcards which all member countries would accept. A standard size of 3 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches was established for government issued postals. Cards would also be allowed to cross international borders at the same rate of postage, and each country would accept the value of the issuing nation’s stamps. In 1948 the Union became a special agency within the United Nations.
ILLUSTRATION
Postcards evolved from a century that highly prized quality illustration. Many books contained fine wood engravings and when they didn’t do, pages of copper engravings, etchings, or lithographs would be printed separately and added to books during binding. After the American Civil War the growth of the printing industry and changing ideas about art ignited the Golden Age of Illustration. There was a growing rejection of Victorian notions that art must serve a moral purpose. In its place the idea of art for art’s sake took root, where the pleasure gained from the beauty of art is enough to warrant its production. The philosophies of the Aesthetic Movement, and the Arts & Craft Movement, both greatly added to the high quality of illustration available by the 1880’s. They supported the use traditional handcrafts that were in steady decline since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Despite the great works these movements produced, their backward looking philosophy would put them more and more out of step with the ever-changing world. But they continued to exert great influence and helped propel the rise of Art Nouveau, which became a dominant European style.
At the same time the in the United States forces were gathering that would lead to the creation of the Brandywine School, which created a generation of great American illustrators. By the time postcards were published in numbers, there were already many skilled and talented artists available to provide images for them. While a number of innovative styles made their appearance in Europe during these years they were slow to affect the graphic arts in America where a more conservative realism remained dominant. Art was expected to reaffirm the status quo, that is the social values of the class that held control economic and political power.
JAPONISME
In the latter half of the 19th century Japan began to open up to western trade and culture in an attempt to join the modern world. While the traditional paintings of Europe created new stylistic schools in Japan, the introduction of an entirely new style, utilizing patterns and flattened shapes, also had a great effect on Western artists. It can be best seen in the new types of compositions that emerged, stressing abstract form over scientific perspective just for the beauty of it. The influence of Japanese style in the United States did not gain momentum until it received a wide audience at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876. The style as used here was also tempered by the influence of Chinoiserie, known since the early clipper trade. Since Chinese Art also influenced the Japanese, it is not always easy to make precise attributions to influence. Architecture, fashion, graphic design, and the fine arts all picked up on Japanese motifs. Its power however was much greater in Europe where it helped inspire the Art Nouveau movement. Ironically Art Nouveau would eventually have a great effect on Japanese graphic artists in their attempts to Westernize.
ORIENTALISM
While the Muslim world had influenced Occidental art for centuries, it grew in influence as painters journeyed into the lands of North Africa and the Middle East after European conquest. It was only through painting and their reproductions that most people were able to glimpse into other societies, and the more different they were from their own the more interest they drew. Depictions of exotic lands gave artists an edge in a highly competitive market, encouraging them to depict these places and peoples stressing cultural differences rather than our common humanity. While social philosophers depicted a backward corrupt land, it provided an excuse for artists to create fanciful scenes often imbued with a type of eroticism that was not socially permissible to paint of Westerners. The forbidden pleasures of harems, slave girls, and other alluring narratives became the subject mater of many postcards as well as paintings. All this produced many contradictory impressions as attempts to interest viewers in true scenes of unfamiliar cultures clashed with Western fantasies. As WWI brought the Ottoman Empire into the fight against the Western Allies, this romanticized theme lost much of its appeal and rapidly faded in favor of more negative depictions.
CHROMOLITHOGRAPHY
Color lithography had been around since the process was invented in 1796, but most prints were hand colored through the mid-19th century. This country’s first chromolithograph, a print of three colors or more, was made in Boston in 1840. There was a great deal of work involved in their production. All were hand drawn, and each color was printed off an individual litho-stone requiring tight registration. It was not uncommon for elaborate single images to require the use of fourteen stones for subtle coloration effects. Some images were created from as many as thirty stones or more. Though the optical properties of primary colors was well known since the 17th century and often employed, no scientific color separation techniques were available at this time. Some printers used a splatter technique, overlapping color markings to give the illusion of additional colors. A heavy varnish was routinely mixed into the ink to better create the illusion of paint. Although a desired quality then, it now shows up as cracks and white spots where ink has flaked off the paper. Chromolithographs often suffer from looking dull as light cannot easily pass through all the layers of ink and reflect back off the paper’s white surface. As quality increased so did demand. Their low price compared to that of original art work created a Democracy of Art among a rising middle class. Posters and trade cards made great use of this technology but in 1889 the world’s first color postcard was printed in Austria. For the remainder of the century chromolithography was the primary method of producing color cards.
COLLECTING CARDS
Soon after chromolithography’s introduction, it was adapted to the production of popular prints that already had a steady market for years. The ability to purchase brightly colored pictures in a largely black & white world proved irresistible to many, which quickly increased demand. Though more prints were produced some saw in this an opportunity in printing up these colorful images on smaller and cheeper cards. They served no specific purpose other than they could be collected for their beauty. These also became popular among the public and were printed up to the end of the 19th century until overpowered by the introduction of picture postcards. Collecting cards were issued individually and in sets, came in all sorts of sizes, had blank or printed backs, and depicted any subject that had a conceivable buyer.
TRADE CARDS
Trade cards were one form of advertising that utilized the growing popularity and availability of chromolithography. The front would contain a brightly colored picture while the back held the description of a product. Some were made with generic images so stores and manufacturers could add information on to them. Printed on 3 by 5 inch card stock they were not meant to be mailed but were given away as advertising. Some however are found today with canceled stamps on them showing they wound up in the mail anyway. Highly collectable in their heyday of the 1880’s and 90’s, many were placed in albums and still survive. This demonstrated the public’s desire for collectable images and helped inspire the production of picture postcards.
REWARD CARDS
The popularity of trade trade cards as collectables led to a marketing strategy where cards carrying appealing images and subject matter were included free with packaged goods as a reward for the purchase. Descriptive information as well as advertising was placed on their backs, and they were issued in sets to encourage sales among those anxious to collect them. Reward cards were usually larger than trade cards but not quite up to standard postcard size. As with trade cards they do not fall into the category of postcards since they were not meant to be mailed but they share a related history.
In Great Britain another type of reward card appeared between the 1880’s and the 1920’s. They were issued on a quarterly basis by schools as a reward for good attendance by students. Without advertising consuming their backs they could be used as postcards. They covered a wide variety of subjects from scenery to fairy tales. In 1903 they began to be printed in larger sizes, making them impossible to mail without trimming them down.
Small sheets of cardboard called stiffeners were place in packets of cigarettes to prevent them from being crushed. Trade cards soon inspired advertising to be printed on these as well. After the invention of the rolling machine in 1884 greatly increased production, these cards adopted the format of the reward card where various subjects would be printed on them in sets. Cigarette cards became the most highly collected of all reward cards and remained very popular through the 1930’s.
PROCESS PRINTING 1868
Ducos du Hauron’s investigations into the color separation process led to many innovations in both photography and printing. He is known as the creator of 3D images called Anaglyphs by printing blue and red hues on one surface from two skewed photographs and viewing them through specially tinted glasses. He also produced color photographic prints around 1877, long before the development of color film through the use of filtering. This was based on the patent he received for the tricolor printing process in 1868, which produced full color lithographs from the printing of only three plates. Each plate was separately inked with red, blue, and green following the principals of additive color theory. For most chromolithographs color was still separated by eye, but after the halftone screen was invented process printing grew in importance, especially to the advancement of photolithography. As color theory advanced the colors most often used switched to the subtractive primaries, cyan, magenta, and yellow, now known as process colors.
HALFTONE SCREENS 1878
Frederick Ives invented the halftone process in 1878 and perfected it into a more usable crossline screen in 1887. This transformed a photograph into a series of varied sized black dots that blended into optical grays. Both photogravure and photolithography were able to reproduce photographic images since mid-century, but they could not be printed on fast rotary presses. These new halftone images were capable of being stereotyped, thus making them compatible with letterpress printing, the most commercially used medium of the day. Wood engraving had reached the point where teams could work on separate pieces of a picture and then reassemble them. This sped up production on this normally slow process to the point where images could accompany breaking news. But it still required the work of highly skilled craftsmen keeping costs up. Illustrations from halftones were cheep to reproduce; only $20. for a full page as opposed to $300. for an engraving. This was a deciding factor as the Country slipped into an economic depression. By 1892 halftones were revolutionizing the printing business. After the first halftone was used in a newspaper in 1897, thousands of engravers were thrown out of work. The art of printing passed from apprenticeships to technical trade schools. Science was now beginning to steer the direction technology would take. Unfortunately for Ives he never patented his invention believing it could be better kept as a house secret.
COLOR PHOTO ENGRAVING 1881
Though Frederick Ives had little financial success with his halftone screen, he made up for it by patenting some of his discoveries in photography. In 1881 he developed a panchromatic film emulsion that captured the full spectrum of light. Up to this point film was only receptive to blue light so photographic color separation was impossible. With panchromatic emulsion, different color filters could be placed over a camera’s lens to create a series of black and white negatives capturing differences in color. When photoengraved onto plates and printed in corresponding additive colors, it created the illusion of a natural color photograph. By 1892 Ives had invented the Trichromatic Camera, which captured an image on all filtered negatives simultaneously. The color matching of inks were somewhat difficult to achieve and this process never did well commercially. More success was had with the Kromoscope, a type of magic lantern that was able to project color transparencies based on Ive’s additive color theory. And panchromatic film was finally introduced to the public in 1906.
COLLECTING
In the years after the American Civil War a whole new consumer culture began to emerge. Industrial mass production could now produce goods on a scale so large that a middle class with rising income and leisure time could collect them. Photographs in the form of cartes de visite and cabinet cards were made for collectors with special albums to keep them in. Trade and cigarette cards were also collected in albums. Hand colored prints, popularized by Currier & Ives, were widely distributed and sort after. A collector’s journal, The Curio, would release its first issue in 1887. The U.S. Mint sensing a new source of revenue issued the first commemorative coin in 1892 for the anniversary of the landing of Columbus, aimed directly at the collector. When exposition cards made an appearance soon afterwards, a collecting culture was already in place to accept them. Postcards, like many paper products were first collected by women. Many of the early post card clubs were founded exclusively for women. This situation only began to change around 1905 when cards depicting suitable subjects for men, such as ships and trains became more common. As more men began to collect cards the hobby took on a more serious approach, and it was not unusual for women to be criticized for their mere interest in pictures.
There were many expositions held in the post-Civil War years to highlight specific regions and promote commerce with them. The 1873 Interstate Industrial Exposition in Chicago, held after the great fire, was the first to issue cards but little attention was given to them. The focus of these early cards was on advertising and few examples remain. It wasn’t until an image of the Eiffel Tower was printed on a souvenir card for the Paris Exposition of 1889 that the world took real notice. By 1893 one hundred and twenty different images of Chicago’s World’s Columbian Exposition were printed on government postal cards by distributors. Privately printed, these exposition cards required two cents postage but it didn’t hurt sales as hundreds of thousands were purchased. The most notable of these cards were the official chromolithographs of Charles W. Goldsmith. This demand inspired similar cards to be made the following year for the California Mid-Winter Exposition in San Francisco, followed by Cotton States in Atlanta, the Tennessee Centennial in Nashville, and Trans-Mississippi in Omaha. After Chicago, the sets produced were in smaller quantities and today are quite rare. The image usually took up a relatively small portion of the front to leave plenty or room to write a message. Montages of multiple scenes surrounded with decorative flourishes were very fashionable on both cards and illustrations of this period.
Photographs were another popular item sold at expositions. While their subjects were as carefully controlled as those printed on official postcards they often had great differences with them. Possibly the most popular image to be sold at the Columbian Exposition of 1893 was not found within the official postcard set but on a card photo of the performer Little Egypt. Her talent consisted of what we would now call a belly dance at the exhibit A Street in Cairo. While many were horrified by this unchristian act, the great draw it had speaks for itself. It was a permissible representation of a woman at the cutting edge of accepted female roles because of its lack of nudity and presentation by a non-white. This trend of depicting sexualized women was continued and can be best be seem in the many photos and postcards made of performers and actresses. While these women were largely looked down upon for their independence, postcards of them would be highly sought after.
THE DEPRESSION OF 1893
Many of the exposition cards sold were purchased as souvenirs rather than for mailing. Noticing a business opportunity, numerous printers started publishing illustrated postcards. By 1896 a great number of view-cards depicting various tourist attractions were available but they did not nearly match the number of postcards that were all the rage in Europe during these years. In the United States, already many years into an agricultural crisis, the year 1893 brought a number of major railroad failures that ignited a five year long depression. Over 500 banks and 16,000 businesses would collapse and unemployment may have reached as high as 25 percent in the manufacturing trades. The publishing industry was especially hard hit. These difficult times did not eliminate interest in postcards but slowed its momentum down considerably. As the nation rose from the depression in 1898 the printing industry would rebound and postcard production would rise dramatically.
SOUVENIR CARDS
Almost all pioneer cards were dedicated to advertising until the larger production of exposition cards began in 1893 for the Chicago Columbian Expo. While many saw the potential in producing other types of souvenir views for tourists few ventured into this field as our nation’s economy soured. The many European made view-cards flooding the receptive American market convinced some printers to take the risk. By 1895 a good many souvenir cards were being printed here depicting large cities and famous tourist attractions both of historic and natural interest. As publishing in these years was risky business the subjects chosen for cards relied on those areas that had already been attracting large numbers of tourists for years.
Although these souvenir cards sold well it was not the booming sales item it could have been. This was partially the fault of Postal regulations. The standard mailing rate was one cent for both government and privately printed cards but there was a penny surcharge on private cards alone if a message was written on them. This created much confusion and outrage as the rate for a more private letter was also two cents, and in those days a penny was no small change. The government was continuously lobbied to make reforms but no changes would come until the depression years ended in 1898 and the pressure from all the new publishers waiting to enter the market tipped the balance. When new regulations took effect many publishers found themselves with a stock of cards manufactured under looser size standards that were now too large to be mailed. Many souvenir cards were subsequently trimmed down to regulation size.
REVIVALS AND REVITALIZING
In our present age of consumerism, where we are encouraged to indulge every whim that leads to a purchase, it is hard to think back to an era so infused with Puritanism, where work in itself was a virtue and leisure was frowned upon. While Europeans seemed comfortable whiling away their hours in comfort at some resort, Americans needed an excuse to get away. One’s health became the socially acceptable reason to take leave of the daily grind as spas were sought out to take on the waters, or mountain resorts visited to reap the benefits of fresh air. For some this reasoning was reinforced with religious overtones as camp meeting grounds sprang up in pleasant environments away from the hot dirty cities. Under the guise of attending spiritual oration some pleasure may be had between sermons. Once these forms of getaways were generally accepted, it was not long until a more formal pattern of summer homes, cottages, and cabins sprang up, all for the purpose of revitalizing oneself, body and soul.
Nowhere was this done more than at the seashore. Strips of barren land that previously could not be given away for lack of want now grew into whole summer communities; large hotels, capable of holding hundreds of guests followed in their wake. Social scenes developed around them with only the thinnest veil of health concerns remaining as an alibi. While these activities were mostly reserved for the top half of the class divide, more average Americans were finding parks, beaches, and amusement areas that catered to those with less money and leisure time. All of these trends not only contributed to an environment that was conducive to writing postcards, but also were themselves the subject matter of countless numbers of cards. It is interesting to note that a very high percentage of postcard messages seem to make references to the sender’s health.
PNEUMATIC MAIL
While the telegraph increased the transmission time of messages they still needed to be transcribed and written down, a process to slow for some businesses. In 1853 London became the first city to build a pneumatic mail delivery system where cylinders containing correspondence would be propelled through tubes by air pressure at high speeds. Paris with 269 miles of air tubes was the largest system built. Philadelphia would construct the first American pneumatic system in 1893 totaling 112 miles. Boston, Chicago, New York, and St. Louis soon followed. It was envisioned that this technology would eventually deliver mail to every home, but it proved expensive to build and maintain. While many European cities used pneumatic mail well into the 20th century, they were shut down in the U.S. after the First World War. Only New York’s system continued to operate until 1953, carrying 30 percent of the city’s first class mail. While the American system accepted regular postcards some European countries issued special postal stationary for use in their pneumatic systems.
FOUNTAIN PEN 1884
A number of inventors tried to replace the quill pen in the 19th century but their attempts failed largely due to leaks. In 1884 Lewis Waterman developed the first fountain pen to be free of the defects that made the others commercially unusable. Originally hand made in his home, they began being manufactured at the rate of a thousand per day by 1900. Other companies started using his basic design but altered the filling mechanism. The nibs on these pens were flexible and needed to be broken in to obtain the individual characteristics of the author’s hand. This made the owners of these pens very reluctant to lend them out. This small invention made it possible to write and mail postcards from convenient places, not just a writing desk. During the 1930’s the cost of these pens place them out of the reach of most ordinary people but by 1950 a cartridge insert made them simpler and cheaper to buy. But it wasn’t long before the arrival of the ballpoint, which would drive fountain pens out of general use.
CYANOTYPE
Card stock can be painted with a special photosensitive emulsion containing iron salts, that when exposed to a negative and washed out yields an image in a bright Prussian blue. The paper’s texture is very evident as the emulsion is absorbed into its fibers and doesn’t coat the surface. No developer was need other than a water wash. Invented by Sir John Hirschel in 1842, the cyanotype became popular in the 1880’s because of its simplicity. The first known postcard made by this process was produced in 1888, and many more homemade cyanotypes would follow well into the 20th century. Kodak even offered a special promotion for a few years in which you could have your negatives printed as cyanotypes. They generally went out of fashion in the 1920’s. Architectural blueprints utilize the same chemistry.
There were also variants of the cyanotype developed in the 1870’s, such as kallitypes, platinotypes, and palladiotypes that used the same basic iron salt chemistry. They are similar in texture to cyanotypes though not in color as they produce silvery browns. As platinum became prohibitively expensive around the First World War, it was largely replaced by palladium. But palladium also grew expensive and by the late 1930’s both methods were rarely used. Kallitypes, which used silver, are less expensive to make, but unlike the highly stable platinum and palladium prints these are prone to fading. All of these methods were employed to create real photo postcards.
HOMEMADE CARDS
In the early years of postcard production it was not always easy to find a picture postcard to purchase. Creative individuals often took it upon themselves to paste pictures or draw onto cards, which were usually government postals. While most of these are very crude many can be very interesting. These cards were not produced to create art but to impart a personal touch. The desire to create something special is why handmade cards continued to be made even when the use of published postcards became widespread.
Paste-on cards could often look like homemade cards though they were commercially manufactured. They appeared in the 1890’s when the supply of postcards was not yet reliable and customers uncertain. Paste-ons were basically a card printed in letterpress, incorporating a color design or words or both with a small photograph pasted onto it. Sometimes only decorative embossing was used around the image creating totally generic stock. These cards could be printed in small numbers on a jobbing platen or even a hand press lessening investment risk. On top of their low cost the speed of production added to their appeal as moneymakers.
TEN-CENT MAGAZINES
When publishers relied on their customers to cover printing costs, prices needed to be kept high; and the only magazines that would fetch high prices were those catering to a very specific audience. By the 1890’s cheaper printing and reproductive methods led to the publication of many magazines at less than a third the usual price. Their greater circulation attracted more ads, turning the entire industry on its head. From being at least 80% reader subsidized, advertising would now provide the needed capital to publish. This took magazine publishing out of its high priced niche market, allowing for the rise of cheap general interest magazines. As advertising grew into an industry of its own, ads began to move off of postcards and into these magazines.
CLOSING OF THE WEST
The year 1890 saw the last large scale clash between the U.S. Cavalry and Native Americans with the massacre at Wounded Knee. That same year the Superintendent of the Census could no longer place a frontier line on a map and declared The West closed. Sporadic fighting would go on another eight years but to little effect. As danger faded and Native Americans began being perceived as a dying race they were quickly redefined from savage killers to noble savages. It was through this perspective that they largely escaped being depicted in the same derogatory terms that other minorities were often shown. While many saw the hypocrisy in the romanticizing of a people we were so eager to destroy, the publics’ fascination with Indians continued to have great appeal. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West opened at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago and drew sixteen million spectators.
As the West became more romanticized in the publics eye so did their interest in it. In this new climate many artists began to depict scenes of the West populated by events and people long gone. This imagery would find its way onto postcards after the turn of the century as it became a popular genre. The vast array of Western postcards produced would help promote a new mythology of the Western Frontier and shape America’s identity more than actual historic events. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny that propelled settlers across the continent would soon begin to be applied to lands beyond our shores.
ART NOUVEAU
No other art movement had as much influence on the design of postcards as Art Nouveau. By the early 1890’s the desire for the beauty of the hand crafted over machine made goods, largely inspired by the Arts & Crafts, and symbolist movements, reached the momentum needed to inspire a new style. Its flowing forms and lines inspired by natural organic forms grew into an international movement influencing all types of design from graphics to architecture. Every country it spread to added its own local traditions to it. The style’s widespread acceptance was due in part to it being based on aesthetics rather than a political or social dogma. Art Nouveau reached its height in popularity just as postcards began to flourish. Too often this style only accompanied goods for the wealthy but its use for graphics was a notible exception. Millions were exposed this way and postcards crossing national borders gave the style additional exposure. Though Art Nouveau dominated European design, fashion was slow to cross the Atlantic. This style influenced American artists but it did not take root here in its entirety being tempered by more austere forms of design. Its influence may have continued to grow in the United States had its supremacy not ended at its base as the Continent was torn apart by war. The beauty inherent in Art Nouveau design continues to make it popular with collectors.
In 1897 postal regulations allowed for new larger sized postcards for advertising. These cards were manufactured in three basic sizes. One was only slightly larger than the average size card and was occasionally die cut into shapes. The more common size for a Businessman’s card was about 8 by 10 inches. Many times they contained nothing but text but elaborate graphics and illustration were also used on them. There was also a larger jumbo size available. Many were published with very complex designs. These were also the forerunners of Novelty Cards, for in addition to being die cut into various shapes many had three dimensional objects glued to them and mechanical parts that let them move. It was a way to compete with ads in the ten-cent magazines flooding the market. Many of these cards were given out by hand or sent within covers as their odd shapes and size made them difficult to mail.
