Lot 22
  • 22

[Cole, Henry (pseud. "Felix Summerly")]

Estimate
10,000 - 15,000 USD
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Description

  • paper
A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You. London: [Joseph Cundall for] Summerly's Home Treasury Office, [December 1843]



Hand-colored lithographed card (3 1/4 x 5 in.; 83 x 127 mm), in the form of a triptych, the central panel depicting a family party of three generations in which the adults are toasting the health of the addressee with wine, the side panels representing Christmas charity (the poor being fed and given warm clothing), addressed to "His old young friends Emma & Agnes" and signed by the designer of the card "J. C. Horsley, Xmasse 1843"; verso of card creased.  Together with: Fore's Christmas Envelope. London: J. R. Jobbins for Messrs. Fores, [1840], being a lithographed envelope (3 3/4 x 5 in.; 96 x 127 mm), the front panel engraved with various Christmas treats, figures, activities such as a ballet, dancing, street musicians, toys being distributed to children, etc.

Provenance

Joyce Blundell Tonge (Sotheby's London, 29 November 1989, lot 192)

Literature

Grolier/Elliott 42; Elliott, Inventing Christmas, pp.85–87; Buday, The History of the Christmas Card, pp. 6–18; Kenneth Rowe, The Ephemerist (December 1997), p. 713

Catalogue Note

"While Germany can claim credit for the custom of the Christmas tree, the prize for the first Christmas card goes to England" (Elliott, Inventing Christmas, p. 85). The first Christmas card, signed by its creator, artist John Calcott Horsley and dated 1843. One of three in the Elliott collection, of  approximately twenty, possibly twenty-one, known to exist. Kenneth Rowe's census for the Ephemera Society of Great Britain located nine cards in institutions, nine cards in the hands of private collectors (including the three from the Elliott collection), and two cards whose current whereabouts is unknown. Just as Rowe's census went to press in The Ephmerist, a copy of the card surfaced at auction at Christie's New York (5 December 1997, lot 239); it was addressed to the "little Jacksons" and signed by S. Walker. It is not clear whether the card in the Christie's sale is one of the cards that Rowe identified as being in private hands, since he did not have the opportunity to examine it. In any event, the Christie's card was donated to the New-York Historical Society by Pat Altschul in 2000 and is now part of the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera.

By the nineteenth century, "all-purpose" cards were widely available. The sender could fill in the name of the recipient, the occasion, a short greeting, and signature.  Also available prior to the first card was the Christmas envelope. The example within this lot was printed in 1840 by J. R. Jobbins, the printer of the first card; it was available either plain or hand-colored. Henry Cole took the idea one length further by commissioning artist John Calcott  Horsley to create an appropriately festive image on a card and inserted a banner with the greeting "A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You." Horsley devised a family party of adults lifting a glass of good cheer to the recipient of the card in the center panel, flanking it with images of Christmas charity (feeding and clothing the poor). There is a line at the top in which to insert the recipient's name and another at the bottom  which the sender could sign.

In his memoirs, Henry Cole erroneously stated that the first cards were printed in 1846, but the matter was settled when three of the original cards, signed by the artist and dated 1843 surfaced. One thousand cards were printed, hand-colored, and sold at the extravagant price of a shilling a card. The image of the merry tipplers (one of them a child, the other three children are tucking into a plum pudding) also occasioned disapproval from the temperance league who feared the card would encourage drunkenness. In spite of its ingenuity, the first Christmas card was not an instant success, and a new card would not be designed for another five years by W. M. Egley. The custom of sending Christmas cards took off in the 1860s with the advent of the less expensive process of color printing. In his memoirs, Henry Cole also alludes to the post office figures for 1880 which indicated an increase of more than 11 1/2 million letters above the ordinary correspondence and four tons of extra registered letters in Christmas week, representing a total postage revenue of ₤58,000 (Buday, p. 6). It should be remembered that Cole not only invented the first Christmas card, but was involved in the founding of the penny post, postage stamps, and postage cards.  

Sotheby's would like to thank the Ephemera Society of Great Britain for generously providing the Rowe census.