This collection includes about 530 examples of business cards selected from amoung more than 200 leading graphic designers in over 20 countries around the world. It focuses on the card's functional and beautiful designs. In this book an experienced collector and writer conveys the adventure of postcard collecting, including chapters on the history of cards, their publishers, artists, and the themes that inspired them such as expositions, greetings, novelties, views, children, comedy, disaster, patriotism, advertising, coins and stamps. Each category includes a brief history and examples of typical postcards. Subjects range from pin-ups to puns, from straight photographs to beautifully drawn Art Nouveau cards.
Author also looks at the sources of supply and at prices and market trends.
Combining elements of social history, nostalgia and aesthetics, they are sought by the collector and connoisseur. The book starts with the discovery of paper in early China and moves through the history of paper art to modern times, covering every major center of paper art in the world and discussing all of the important paper artists of historic times. Visiting Cards are a comparatively recent social phenomenon which flourished in the 18th, 19th and forepart of the 20th centuries.