Jessie Marion King was so versatile artist it's surprising she didn't create more postcards and greeting cards. The web is full of cards simply made from scans of her illustrations from numerous books which are perfect raw material due to great images, ethereal feel, decorative borders, and other elements, and often accompanied with some text as well.
This is the oldest postcard by the artist we managed to find. It's a generic greeting card dating from 1900 when she just officially became a Tutor in Book Decoration and Design at the Glasgow School of Art.
Anyway, our intention today is to present her work with some original pieces that popped up at auction in recent years. It's good to know that Germany was by far the leading publisher and seller of picture cards of all kinds due to superb printing technology (Jessie's first illustrating projects were for German publishers as well) and companies from Great Britain only later stepped in the postcard and greeting card business.
The market already existed but was not fully developed, and niches were still to be defined. So such a Christmas card like the above was pretty rare. Another option for involvement was just an addition of certain elements - in the case of Jessie M. King we are talking about decorative borders for the front and back side of the picture card below.
Generic greeting cards dominated the market at the beginning of the 20th century. Here are a few more examples:
When the market was already thriving, of course, the business practice already showed that the most profitable postcards were the ones sold in series. Companies in Germany already learned that about a decade ago. We conclude the article with a typical set of six picture postcards by Jessie Marion King, published by Miller & Lang in 1929:
All of the six picture postcards above are made from illustrations for children's books what further helped to make the postcard business more profitable. Anne Anderson's cards are a great example of such practice.
We'll be on the lookout for more Jessie M King's postcards and add them if and when we find them. Until then - tell your friends about this page, and have a great one.