Calling Card

American trade cards that did not possess images nonetheless served to generate brand recognition for their producers. To accomplish this goal, these primarily written cards sometimes implemented creative fonts and eye-catching phrases. This card for E. L. Dousman demonstrates this branding technique by featuring a bobbin lace pattern border.

“A Short History of Trade Cards,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 5, no. 3 (April
1931).

Berg, Maxine and Clifford, Helen, Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising
and the Trade Card in Britain and France, The Journal of the Social History Society, (April 28,
2015).

Chase, Ernest D., The Romance of Greeting Cards, Rust Craft Publishers, 1956.

Jay, Robert, The Trade Card In Nineteenth-Century America, University of Missouri Press,
1987.

Lewis, John, Printed Ephemera: The Changing Uses of Type and Letterforms in English and
American Printing, W.S. Cowell Ltd., 1962.

Mehaffy, Marilyn Maness, Advertising Race/Raceing Advertising: The Feminine
Consumer(Nation), 1876-1900, Signs, 23, no. 1, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, 142-
143, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3175155.

Oatman-Stanford, Hunter, “Extreme Shipping: When Express Delivery to California Meant 100
Grueling Days at Sea,” Collectors Weekly, (June 2, 2016),
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-express-delivery-meant-100-days-at-sea/.

Peterdi, Gabor, “Lithography” section of “Printmaking” article, Encyclopedia Britannica online,
2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/printmaking/Lithography.