An Illustrated History of the Embroidered Silk Postcards is the standard reference book on embroidered silk postcards. It contains references to over 2600 different cards with over 270 illustrations. The section on Early Cards lists 25 cards. The cards listed below are additional cards discovered since the book was published. The latest additions are shown in RED.
Greetings cards make up the largest section of embroidered silk postcards. In fact, it could be argued that every embroidered silk card is a greetings card. The earliest embroidered silk postcards were introduced in 1899 and now cards from the period before the First World War form a whole new section on this website as much more information has been discovered about them. No information on these cards was available before my book was published and this website is the only source available with a detailed description of them.
The listings for Early (Pre-1914) embroidered silk postcards have been through a major overhaul since the last publication of the website, and many cards in this section have not been described before. A few descriptions are missing because I neglected to make a note of them - apologies for that. I have arranged the listings under specific publishers, which is different to that in most of the other sections on the website. Those listed under "Unknown Publisher" may actually have been made by a listed publisher, but there is no acknowledgement or logo or similarity in design to assign it to a publisher.
There are a large number of different types of early embroidered silk postcards from before 1914 as different manufacturers and publishers experimented with a range of styles and designs. Some of these were dictated by the postal regulations: such as the need in the early days to keep the address side of the postcard just for the address. This limited the size of the embroidered panel as it had to share the space with the message.
Once the address and message could both be on the same side, the styles developed until the recognised one emerged: a three layer card with a backing card printed for the stamp, address and message, with an embroidered silk panel surrounded by a frame about 1.5 cm wide. This took until about 1908, nearly ten years after the first embroidered silk postcards were published. Many of the earlier styles were still in use beyond this date.
Consequently, there are a wide variety of Early embroidered silk postcards to describe and list. So, I have separated them into two broad categories: those without a frame around the embroidered panel and those with a frame.
Most of the cards manufactured before 1908 came from Switzerland, Austria and Germany, after which French manufacturers became increasingly important until they eventually dominated the market.
While all this activity was going on in Europe, a different style of embroidered silk postcard became popular in the United States., where an embroidered Motif was appliqued to a printed card base. Most of the cards were aimed at academic institutions, which probably indicates the target audience. The embroidered motifs were intended to be removed from the card base and attached to the school uniform. There was also a range of patriotic and greetings cards, with a few military cards. These seem to have been introduced in about 1908 and lasted until about 1912.
Many of the early cards were associated with exhibitions and several are illustrated on the Exhibitions and Events page. Some of the early Date cards are shown on the page dedicated to Date cards. Further images of a representative selection of cards are shown beneath the listings. There is a separate page with an article describing Early (Pre-1914) Embroidered Silk Postcards in detail.
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