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Antique Christmas

The Christmas Card Tale

by Wayne Mattox

How do you tell somebody you care? Go to the store, buy a card and let somebody else do the telling for you.

The oldest Christmas card created for general distribution probably was created by William Egley Jr.; a 16 year-old British youth.  His 3 1/2-inch- by 5 1/2-inch, 1842 printed impression, preserved in the British Museum, depicts four holiday scenes and a "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year" greeting with blanks after the word "To" on the top and "From" at the bottom. Industrious kid. 

By 1860, many kinsmen had embraced Egley's concept.  Rival greeting card firms began employing prominent artists such as Kate Greenaway, the beloved illustrator of children's books.

The father of American Christmas cards was award-winning Boston lithographer/inventor Louis Prang, who, in 1873, reproduced a holiday card autographed by Christmas Carol author, Charles Dickens. Perhaps the greatest of Prang's many innovations was the development of a multi-color printing process that incorporated as many as 20 colors on one print or card.  Hues and detailing were so vivid that artists were sometimes not able to distinguish their own works from reproduced chromos (chromolithographic prints) when hung side by side on a wall.

Taking full advantage of this technology, Prang employed the finest artisans of his day. Card painters included the likes of Frederick S. Church, Arthur F. Tait and Winslow Homer. Poetic geniuses such as Longfellow, Tennyson and William Cullen Bryant were among those hired to write verses.
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