The invention of a cheap and easy colour printing process, along with the Victorian tendency for sentimentality and the introduction of the Penny Post, all worked together to create a huge market for greetings cards. Victorian valentines are notable for their handmade finish, the more elaborate among them including cutouts, jewels and dried flower embellishments. They incorporated many of the motifs we associate with love and well-wishes today – hearts, flowers and Cupid. The sender of the card may not be the only surprise for the receiver – fancy cards included mechanical elements, with flaps, pull levers, unfolding paperwork and most expensive of all, intricately cut cobwebs lifting to reveal a hidden image.
All valentines shown date between 1860 and 1880 unless otherwise stated.
Lithography (invented in 1796) is a chemical printing process in which an image is drawn onto limestone using grease-based ink. The plate is then coated in an acidic solution, which alters the plate (where not protected by the grease) so that it attracts water. Once the stone is wet, and oil-based ink applied, the ink can only stick to the drawn areas.
Chromolithography, the use of multiple plates to print colour, was developed around forty years later. It was the first time colour printing could be produced on a mass scale.
Each colour of the design is etched onto its own printing plate, with multiple dots layering on each print to create colour gradients and tonal variations. The more colours you could ‘suggest’ on as few plates as possible, the cheaper and quicker the printing process became, making the process suitable for mass re-production of artworks.
The blossoming greetings cards market came at the right time for illustrator Kate Greenaway. From a working class family in London, she studied art and graphic design from the age of 12. Greenaway was working professionally as a children’s illustrator whilst still in training and the same year she enrolled in Slade School of Fine Art (1871) she began work as freelancer, producing greetings card illustrations for Marcus Ward & Co., which she continued to do so for several years.
Marcus Ward & Co, was a manufacturer of greetings cards, illustrated books and calendars, founded in Belfast in 1833. They were highly skilled in chromolithography printing and employed skilled artists including Walter Crane and Kate Greenaway.
Greenaway was as popular as fellow children’s artist Walter Crane, and her work remains as influential as his. Her distinctive style of children in Regency-period fashions, described then as “quaint and old fashioned costumes”, was nostalgic, idealised and sweet. In 1899 the press referred to her as a household name in both England and America, with “every little tot in both countries” dressed in real-life fashions inspired by her illustrations.
The handmade lace and collage style of valentine originated in England. It’s subsequent spread and popularity in the US is credited to a young woman from Massachusetts, Esther Howland. The year she graduated college, 1847, she received an English valentine. Quite taken by its design, she convinced her father (who should happen to own a stationer and bookseller company) to order lace paper, paper flowers and coloured paper from England. She made a dozen designs emulating the English style and had her brother, the company’s salesman, take the cards on his next trip across New England. To her surprise, he received orders totalling $5,000. She recruited her friends and created a production line in a room of the family’s home.
Esther began advertising her valentines in 1850 and her sales grew to $100,000 annually, creating cards for all occasions with prices ranging from a few cents to several dollars. Esther is credited with being the first to place pieces of coloured paper under lace paper. In 1879, still operating her business from her parent’s home, she published a ‘Valentine Verse Book’, with 131 verses printed in different sizes and colours. The intention was that sellers could supply a card and add the verse of the buyer’s choice.
Sources:
A History of Valentines (1952) by Ruth Webb Lee.
All images from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, except Cupid (in a boat), Library of Congress.