The greeting cards collected for inclusion
into the Published and Digitised Collection of Greeting cards were collected to
show the wide variety of Greeting Card types available - not for the personal
messages which they contain. The majority of examples of greeting cards with
personal messages are held within the Private Record Collections.
Original finding aid 'Christmas Cards' created 22 July
1997.
Finding aid updated and collection rehoused in 2001.
The collection was originally loosely arranged according to conflict, country of origin and unit and housed in manilla folders and Type 1 archive boxes. During the re-housing of the collection in 2000-2001 the collection was re-housed with each card placed in a mylar sleeve, then into ring-bound folders. The existing arrangement was enhanced and expanded using the order of units as listed in the unit war diaries for First and Second World War (Series AWM4 and AWM52). The use of the unit structure from these series helped to create an arrangement for this collection which encompassed every unit involved in each conflict, thus allowing for the continued expansion of the collection without the need to continuously re-organize the collection. As a result of this arrangement, there are sub-divisions listed in the collection which do not hold any items. These are shown as: (Nil)
Open.
Contact Curator of Published & Digitised Collections.
Contact Curator of Published & Digitised Collections.
Greeting Cards, Published & Digitised Collections, Australian War Memorial.
Greeting cards
The first commercial greeting card (a Christmas card) was produced in England in November 1843. The concept of using cards to send greetings and messages was slowly adopted through the late 1800s and then increasingly so that by the early 1900s the sending of Christmas cards was widely accepted.
Greeting cards and the armed forces
Christmas 1913 - just prior to the First World War - marked the 70th anniversary of the first commercially produced Christmas card. At the time, there were over forty Christmas card publishers and wholesalers in London who employed many thousands of people to produce and distribute cards. As with the general public, the armed forces were also attracted to the card phenomenon and the use of specially designed and produced cards was commonplace for many units. The trend of using greeting cards has continued to this day, with soldiers sending and receiving both commercial, official and handmade cards to family and friends whilst on active service.
The use of handmade cards was especially prevalent during the early conflicts and in prisoner of war camps due to the unavailability of commercial cards. The use of handmade cards is less common in the last few decades, mostly due to the proliferation of commercial card manufacturers.
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