These greeting cards from the late 19th and early 20th-century celebrate the New Year with lucky pigs, foxes fleeing for their lives, at least one drunk frog, a bloom of children’s heads, happy chimney sweeps, cats (natch.), hotair balloons, boozed-up butterflies and gnomes. Witty, cute, fun and quirky, these cards are more kitschy than the lush cards of the Vienna Workshops, these greeting cards contain elements of our continued interest in miniature people and gigantic pets.
”Herzlichen Glueckwunsch zum neuen Jahre”, ”Happy New Year”
A Victorian New Year card (via Bolton Council)
“A Happy New Year” (Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1870–1900) (via Boston Public Library)
A Russian Empire New Year card (before 1917) (via Wikimedia)
A Victorian New Year card (via Bolton Library)
“Happy New Year to You” (1908)
“Godt Nytaar! (Happy New Year!),” illustrated by Andreas Bloch (1860–1917) (via National Library of Norway/Flickr)
A Victorian New Year card (via Nova Scotia Archives/Flickr)
“A happy New Year to you,” on a Victorian card that once won fifth prize in a design competition (via University of Glasgow Library/Flickr)
“Prosit Neujahr! (Happy New Year!)” (Berlin, 1904) (via Wikimedia)
Robins and a cat celebrating the holidays (1876) (via National Library of Ireland/Flickr)
“Godt Nytaar! (Happy New Year!)” (1880) (via National Library of Norway/Flickr)
“A Happy New Year” (1909) (via New York Public Library)
“Best New Year wishes” (Berlin, 1900–10) (via National Library New Zealand)
A Victorian New Year card (via Nova Scotia Archives)
“A Happy New Year” (Raphael Tuck & Sons, 1909) (via Furman University Postcard Collections)
“Godt Nytaar! (Happy New Year!)” (1916) (via National Library of Norway)
A Victorian New Year card (via Nova Scotia Archives)
A lady jumping with her horse. Happy New Year greeting
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
“With the best wishes for the New Year” on a Victorian card (via University of Glasgow Library)
“Godt Nytaar! (Happy New Year!),” illustrated by Andreas Bloch (1916) (via National Library of Norway)
A kitten with a shoe full of flowers on a New Year card (1908) (McFaddin-Ward House Museum, via University of North Texas Libraries)
Photo by Amoret Tanner Collection –
Greeting card of musical frogs circa 1880
Photo by Amoret Tanner Collection
Chromolithographed and embossed greeting postcard
‘Prosit Neujahr”, ”Happy New Year”
New Year postcard to celebrate 1912
‘Bonne Année’ inscription on the front side while on the back side the postage stamp indicates the date of 25th of December 1910 and the city of Bulkeley, Alexandria, Egypt, as post-card dispatch place
Circa 1900
Circa 1900 – Austria
Cica. 1900
Historic New Year’s card with symbols of good fortune, boy forging horseshoes next to pigs, around 1900
American New Year greeting card 1875. “Life is but a smoke” Chromolithograph. Imprint: Copyright 1875 by L. Prang & Co. – Boston
Hot air balloons symbolising years, New Year postcard signed Santos Dumont, January 1st, 1907
New Year card for 1916 showing German soldier giving bouquet of flowers to a woman
Via: HyperAllergic
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