Though these cards are not a matching set, they are of an era. At the time they were made, a rising middle class was creating new demand for affordable luxury items like fine papers, engraved calling cards, gilt-edged books, and gilded picture frames. Even a small amount of shiny detail on a penny postcard made it special.
Of the great many decorative and floral postcards, these ones do show their age. They were more common than their appearance suggest, and the luster that commanded so much attention a century ago has faded. The corners are softened or torn, and the writing is obscured. The background color itself is mottled, scratched, and often reveals an impression of the stamp or cancellation on the reverse. One card has developed a cloudy bloom across the front, just as verdigris slowly encroaches on the hue and texture of copper.
Meant to appear as gold, the metallic substance used was actually bronze powder, which tarnishes, rubs off, and browns with age. Printers were still experimenting with the best approach to reflective ink. As we’ll see, this wasn’t it.
Print shops called this process bronzing. A lithographer first ran the sheet through the press, using a sticky varnish where the shiny effect was wanted. While the varnish stayed tacky, a worker daubed the sheet with fine metal powder. The powder adhered to the wet varnish and fell away from the dry paper around it. A soft brush removed the excess. In the legendary 1880 trade manual, The Grammar of Lithography, bronzing is described among a series of finishing techniques done after the main color printing was complete. The process required a steady hand and a practiced eye. Too little powder left the image looking thin and patchy, and the loose metal dust was a known respiratory contaminant in the print shop.
Bronzing was a specialty trade but it wasn’t particularly rare. In the Heinrich Steinberg printing supply catalog, bronzing ink was offered to lithographers and letterpress printers as a stock item, sold as one option among many inks and materials a working print shop would order regularly. Bronzing was a routine commercial finish, sold as a fancy extra.
Chemists worked on a better recipe for decades. A 1922 German patent described a new formula for mixing metals into lacquer inks. When metallic elements (most often copper and zinc) are added, they lock into a harder, more water-resistant film that oxidize in the air and leaves a slick surface as the ink dries. However, the oxidation that stabilized the lacquer ink is the same process that tarnished the metallic additives. The finely ground metal flakes keep reacting with the oxygen, even over a century.
This cornflower card shows the die-stamped details that give the petals a sculpted, three-dimensional texture. Embossing is a mechanical process done by pressing the card stock between engraved metal plates. Print shops often combined bronzing and embossing for extra visual weight, further pushing a commercial mechanical process to produce an object appreciated for its artistry.
Victorian and Edwardian greetings commonly carried rhymed text, including references to well-known verses. Robert Herrick’s 1648 poem To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time begins with the line, “Gather ye rosebuds while ye may…” and “In the desert a fountain is springing…” is adapted from Lord Byron’s 1816 poem Stanzas to Augusta with one word changed. In that era, card publishers borrowed freely, rarely credited the poets, and also employed their own writers to produce the florid messages alongside each bouquet.
The Victorian language of flowers, or floriography, assigned a specific sentiment to each bloom. Violets stood for modesty. Roses meant love, more devoted as the color deepened. A sender might choose a card’s flower to express a tender sentiment, though mailing it as a postcard was no secret. Readers of the period were expected to recognize and decode those meanings inside a new middle-class code of conduct. Sending the right card with the right flower and verse reflected the rules of polite society.
Though bent and tarnished, these postcards are no less charming more than a hundred years later. Some of the shimmer is still there, but the smoky ochre slowly replacing it has its own sort of visual value.
To Read More
- The Grammar of Lithography — W. D. Richmond’s 1880 trade manual for commercial lithographers, covering the era’s bronzing, gilding, and dusting techniques.
- Bronze powder — A materials-science entry from the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, explaining what bronze powder is and why it discolors over time.
- Heinrich Steinberg Issues a Catalogue of Every Kind of Supply for Lithographers and Other Printers — Jeremy Norman’s account of an 1891 Berlin trade catalogue that sold bronzing ink and other lithographic supplies.
- Water-Soluble Oil and Lacquer Paints — A 1922 German patent describing how sulfur, phosphorus, or selenium additives were used to stabilize oil and lacquer paints through oxidation.
- The Secret Life of Victorian Cards — The Ephemera Society of America on how greeting cards helped enforce middle-class codes of conduct in the Victorian era.
- Victorians’ Secret Ways of Keeping in Touch — The Postal Museum’s overview of Victorian postcard and correspondence culture.
- The Language of Flowers: An Alphabet of Floral Emblems (1857) — The Public Domain Review on the Victorian practice of assigning fixed sentiments to specific flowers.