The Victorian Christmas Card as Aesthetic Object: 'Very interesting ephemerae of a very interesting period in English Art-production'

摘要

Throughout the second half of the nineteenth century, the Christmas card became an increasingly popular means of exchanging seasonal greetings, and this article traces the complex interactions of discourses of sentimental and economic value in the history and development of the nineteenth-century Christmas card. It highlights in particular the decade 1878-1888 as a special period in the history of the design and production of the Christmas card in which the practices of fine art were called up to endow the greeting card with an aesthetic value that could potentially counter concerns about the growing predominance of economic value in late nineteenth-century culture. Such cards made claims to be considered as aesthetic objects, and as such could cater to an increasing variety of consumer tastes within a diversifying market and offer themselves as affordable objects that could satisfy the increasing demands of House Beautiful aesthetics. But rather than viewing the aesthetic card merely as a niche publishing venture, this article argues that this particular type of card was also developed as a self-consciously hybrid object designed to bridge the boundary between the fine and decorative arts and bring lessons in art and aesthetic discernment to a mass middle-class public.