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It is estimated that over 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent every year around 14 February. After Christmas, it’s the second-most popular time of year for exchanging messages: romantic, witty, bold or simply full of love!
In the USA, ‘Valentines’ are traditionally sent or delivered by hand to people of all ages, including family members: messages of love, cards celebrating friendships, or playful declarations. It’s an excuse to exchange small gifts, shower others with attention and, of course, send a sweet or original card. In Europe, meanwhile, Valentine’s Day has a more romantic connotation: couples exchange gifts and share a special moment and, once again, etiquette dictates that the date is marked with an original card.
Did you know that lovers have been exchanging billets-doux in card form for at least 400 years? Today we’d like to tell you how, over the centuries, a series of inventions in the printing world allowed companies to produce increasingly creative Valentine’s Day cards. Get ready for a rollicking ride through the history of this unique object, and curious examples of how ladies and gentlemen and boys and girls have communicated their love on this special day – from the seventeenth century right through to 2024!
What was the first ever Valentine’s Day card?
As often happens when we search for the origins of common habits, it is difficult to separate legend from historical fact. According to some versions of events, the feast day of St Valentine became dedicated to lovers a very long time ago… around 1,700 years, in fact!
The ancient Romans celebrated Lupercalia in mid-February: a festival considered wild even at the time, which looked forward to the imminent arrival of spring. Activities included semi-naked young men running around the city, playfully whipping anyone they came across, supposedly as a way to improve fertility.
In the fifth century AD, Pope Gelasius I put an end to this festival, and some people claim it was he who insisted people celebrate Valentine’s Day instead. Either way, over the centuries, and especially from the sixteenth century onwards, the day evolved into a celebration of love.
When it comes to tracing the first ever Valentine’s Day card, one story recounts that it was written by St Valentine himself, who, on the night of his execution, apparently sent a farewell card to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had befriended, signed ‘from your Valentine’. This is probably a myth, but there might be a grain of truth in another story, which traces the first Valentine’s Day card to the Duke of Orleans: when imprisoned in the Tower of London, he wrote a note to his wife expressing his love, now preserved in the British Library.
The seventeenth-century fashion for Valentine’s Day cards among English gentlemen
Whoever sent the first ever Valentine’s Day card, we know for certain that the tradition became quite popular from the seventeenth century onwards. In Britain, the festival became increasingly commercialised: gentlemen were expected to buy a gift for their beloved – gloves and suspenders were the most popular items at the time – and this was often accompanied by a Valentine’s Day card. Indeed, in 1797, a book was published in London with the title The Young Man’s Valentine Writer – a guidebook describing how to write the perfect Valentine’s Day card!
The cards became increasingly elaborate, featuring handmade designs, hearts, flowers and other romantic motifs. One interesting trend was the production of Valentine’s Day cards in a Fraktur style: a laborious form of folk art that became popular in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among the German community of Pennsylvania. Here is an example:
Another very fashionable type of Valentine’s Day card at the time was the puzzle purse. These resembled paper jewels, and were made by folding up sheets of paper like origami. They often contained a gift too: a lock of hair or a ring, for example.
Then in the nineteenth century, things started to change: innovative processes like chromolithography allowed images to be printed in numerous bright colours. And at the same time, the launch of a modern postal system made sending cards throughout the UK, and indeed worldwide, much simpler.
Valentine’s Day cards began to be produced on an industrial scale.
Mass-produced Valentine’s Day cards using chromolithography
In Britain, in 1840, sending a letter suddenly became simple and affordable. It cost one penny to post a letter anywhere in the country, and you could prepay using a brand-new invention: stamps. It has been calculated that just one year later, in 1841, over 400,000 Valentine’s Day cards were sent by post.
In France in the same period, chromolithography was being developed: a new printing technique that allowed multicoloured images to be mass produced. The technology was perfected in 1837: before this date, producing coloured prints was a highly laborious task, or required companies to first print in black and white and then colour in the image by hand. Here is an incredible Valentine’s Day card made using this very technique: a map of the Kingdom of Love printed in Germany in 1777!
Chromolithography allowed printers to use many different colours very quickly and easily, and gave them a wide range of brighter hues to choose from. The result was an explosion in the variety of Valentine’s Day cards, which began travelling the world along with their messages of love!
The range of subjects and ways of saying ‘I love you’ widened, from classic, ultra-romantic cards to comic options. Let’s take a look at some particularly interesting examples.
In this early twentieth-century Valentine’s Day card from the USA, a message of love is combined with a sport that had only just been invented: tennis!
Another Valentine’s Day card celebrated the possibilities opened up in the realm of love by the recently invented telephone. Two lovers are depicted whispering sweet nothings to one another on a dreamy phone call in the woods.
And there were some more light-hearted Valentine’s Day cards too, like this one, also printed with chromolithography.
Innovations in printing technology and some ultra-creative Valentine’s Day cards
But chromolithography was not the only innovation in the world of printing that boosted the creativity of Valentine’s Day cards. European printers devised various cutting-edge mechanical embossing and die-cutting processes, allowing the mass production of even more imaginative cards.
One particularly unusual type of card from the Victorian era was the cobweb Valentine.
These were mechanical cards with two or more layers: a cut spiral on top was pulled up using a piece of thread to reveal the contents of the layer below, usually a message or printed image. These Valentine’s Day cards could be simple or complex, handmade or mass-produced. This article from the Met in New York uses animations to show how these tiny printed masterpieces worked.
Cards based on pop culture: Valentine’s cards from the 1930s to the present day
The technological innovations continued in the twentieth century, and the complexity and originality of Valentine’s Day cards continued to increase. Here, for example, is an interactive card from America from the beginning of the last century: the printed image can be moved using the small wheel at the side.
As the decades went by, Valentine’s Day cards started to incorporate the century’s most popular graphics and trends. In fact, you could produce a sort of history of twentieth-century graphic design using these mass-produced messages of love, which pay homage to the inventions, new ideas, characters and stars of the century.
Here are several Valentine’s Day cards exchanged by lovers in the 1930s, 1940s and 1960s.
The format started to change too: as well as cards, you could also buy Valentine’s Day stickers to decorate gifts and personalised cards. Here is an example from the 1970s, produced by a famous fast food brand!
In the 1980s and 1990s, many Valentine’s Day cards were based on pop culture, incorporating well-known characters and personalities from Super Mario to the pop stars of the era and basketball sensation Michael Jordan. Some of the cards from those decades are almost unbelievable: here are just a few of them!
Finally, we reached the new millennium, and with it new idols for Valentine’s Day cards.
The same trend continues today,but instead of Britney Spears, the cards now feature Taylor Swift.
The world’s most famous pop star put some personalised Valentine’s Day cards and stickers on her website for her fans.
Alternatively, in 2024 you could also have opted for a Valentine’s Day card inspired by one of this decade’s biggest films: the Barbie movie.
How about you? What Valentine’s Day card will you send next time? And what do you think the next trends will be?