At Sarah’s special request, I am reissuing this series of introduction cards. It was probably the most successful post during my time on Tumblr, around 60.000 at last, so it should not be missing here. Delightfully old-fashioned and absolutely analogue, enjoy.
According to Alan Mays, who collects them, they were “used by the less formal male in approaches to the less formal female.” We think of nineteenth-century courtship as being impossibly straight-laced and buttoned-down, and certainly a printed card inquiring for permission to accompany a young miss to her door is consistent with that, but the eager men found plenty of ways to work clever jokes and insinuations into their calling cards. Via dangerousminds.
More about this tradition in The Encyclopedia of Ephemera by Maurice Rickards. More to see: Mays’ exhaustive Flickr collection.
Design is fine. History is mine. 