Raphael Tuck & Sons
The legendary Raphael Tuck was born in East Prussia (now
part of Germany) in 1821 and emigrated to England in 1865 with his wife
Ernestine and their seven children. His first business venture was in London in
1866 with a picture framing shop that also sold prints and furniture. Four years
later three of his sons joined the business and within 12 months they had
started production of their first greetings cards including special ones for
Christmas - a market to which they introduced many new features.
In 1880
they innovatively organised a competition to encourage new greeting card designs
and in 1881 Raphael's son Adolph took over as Managing Director. As early as
1883 their pre-eminence in the publishing field - they had by now expanded into
scrap books, postcards and all manner of publishing - was recognised by the
Scotsman newspaper that enthused:
"Those who seek to make Christmas Cards as good as works of art do
great and meritorious service to the community. Among those who certainly
render such service Messrs. Raphael Tuck and Sons must have a foremost place.
They all reflect great credit on the taste and the enterprise of the
publishers. Each and all off them will be prized by all people of good
taste."
The Post Office was rather pernickety in Victorian times and Adolph was a
leading campaigner in getting them to relax their restrictions on the postcard
sizes to allow him to produce today's full-size cards measuring 5.5 inches by
3.5 inches and by 1904 the firm had over 15,000 designs in production.
It
was ironic that when much of the world was displaying Raphael Tuck Christmas
cards on its mantelpieces, one of the worst air raids of World War II on 29th
December 1940 completely destroyed Raphael House in London and all Tuck's
records and archives including many priceless originals.
However, such
was the huge popularity of the Tuck cards that they were distributed around the
world in their millions and so the rich heritage created over a period of 60
years was not lost but remains to captivate collectors to this
day.
Little is known of the Scottish Clans series except that they were
published around 1906 and admirably represent the sentimental way in which the
world saw Scotland at that time.
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