Sir Henry Cole (1808-1882) was the first director of the Victoria and Albert Museum, but he also holds the accolade of being the first person in Britain to send a Christmas card. Born in 1808, Cole was a civil servant, educationalist, inventor and industrial designer. His boundless energy ensured that things got done, and in the early 1840s he was instrumental in reforming the postal system and establishing the Penny Post – an act that would popularise the sending of seasonal greetings cards.
Cole was a busy man and lacked the time (and possibly inclination!) to write his customary Christmas letters, so he decided to commission an illustrated card that could be personalised with a simple message. The first Christmas card was designed in 1843 by his friend, artist John Callcott Horsley, and comprised three panels. One (pictured above) depicted the Cole family raising a toast, while the other two portrayed the charitable acts of feeding the hungry and clothing the naked – a reminder of every family’s Christian duty during the season of goodwill.
Unfortunately, some do-gooders complained that the central panel in the Christmas card might encourage drunkenness. This argument was put to bed in 1894 by a writer in the fine-arts journal The Studio, who pointed out that “if we investigated all the cases of drunkenness in all these years, could we find a single one remotely traceable to this design of Mr Horsley’s, or any of its fellows?”
No fewer than 1,000 copies of Henry Cole’s Christmas card were made available for the public to purchase for 1s – an expense that most families couldn’t afford. The high cost reflected the effort involved, since each card was printed by lithograph before being coloured by hand. At the time it was judged to be a commercial flop, but developments in printing technology, as well as the shift in Christmas trends because of Prince Albert’s German influence, meant that Cole’s fledgling idea caught on.
The new commercialisation of Christmas offered a chance for Christmas cards to flourish, because they slotted in neatly alongside other new festive fashions such as Christmas trees, carol singing and crackers.
In 1848, artist William Maw Egley designed a new Christmas card along similar lines to Cole’s original version, and WCT Dobson, a member of the Royal Academy, also sent a Christmas illustration to a friend, which he subsequently had printed for friends and relatives the following year. These small-scale but not insignificant achievements paved the way for a more commercialised approach. Manufacturers of Valentine’s Day cards were particularly keen to exploit the new trend – after all, most customers bought only one valentine, but they might need 20 Christmas cards for their friends and family.
The processes used to produce Valentine’s Day cards, such as fabric appliqué and the new machine-made paper ‘lace’ borders, were also used for Christmas cards in the 1860s and 1870s, and their designs resembled those used on valentines. Cupids, young couples frolicking in the snow, and layers of card that would open to reveal flowers all appealed to the bourgeois market.
It was not until the 1880s that Christmas cards became affordable to all but the poorest. Imported cards from Germany provided a reasonably priced option with publishers such as
S Hildesheimer & Co introducing the ‘Penny Basket’ in 1879: a set of around a dozen cards not unlike the multi-packs we buy today, and sold via drapery stores, tobacconists and toy shops.