Excerpt from Christmas Cards and Their Chief Designers
The fact that the Christmas card is rapidly becoming a recognised subject for collectors would not in itself warrant its consideration from a purely artistic standpoint. For collecting is only accidentally concerned with Art. Some most popular manufactured products, eagerly amassed by experts, could not for an instant be considered even mildly artistic. A postage stamp, for example, that is not absolutely beneath contempt so far as its design is concerned, is rare enough. Comparatively few "book-plates" are in themselves intrinsically interesting as decoration. But other branches familiar to connoisseurs coins, gems, terra cottas, lacquer, bronzes, and the like, are almost invariably artistic, often enough genuinely serious works of art. The Christmas card must be taken as mid-way between the extremes. Perhaps in no single instance does it rise to the level of the average of the best coins, gems, or terra cottas. But even at its worst it is seldom so distinctly unlovely as the postage stamp, or the old play-bill. Such interest as it possesses, however, is entirely confined to its designs. Its sentiment excellent in itself is worn threadbare by repetition. Its "original poetry" is rarely original, still more rarely poetry; its ideals are, as a rule, peculiarly conventional.
For the preparation of this paper, it has been my lot to look through the sample books of all the chief firms who manufacture Christmas cards. How many thousand patterns have passed under my eye I dare not estimate.
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