Drummond, Charles - Thomas Sturrock & Alexander Aikman Scotland's first Greetings Card & Christmas Two original metal printing plates for a New Year card and a Christmas card, produced by Charles Drummond, bookseller in Leith, Edinburgh, in 1841, each 9 x 6.5cm, with the wooden blocks renewed; [with] two proof cards, one stating 'A GUID NEW YEAR AN' MONY O' THEM', uncoloured, and the second stating 'A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU', coloured and with Drummond's impression details to the lower right corner; alongside various items of ephemera relating to the cards and Charles Drummond Footnote: Provenance: Charles Drummond, Bookseller and Printer, 133 Kirkgate, Leith [Edinburgh]; and thence by descent. An accompanying letter from The Scottish Council (Development and Industry) dated 11th December 1951, thanks Miss Catherine Drummond for the loan of the first greetings card printing plate. Catherine Drummond, the granddaughter of Charles Drummond, frequently wrote into local newspapers, explaining the origins of this greetings card. Several newspaper clippings are included in this lot. These plates have been exhibited at several museums, including the Museum of Childhood, Edinburgh. Note: The 'invention' of the first commercially marketed Christmas card can be attributed to Sir Henry Cole who, in 1843, produced a Christmas greetings card showing a happily inebriated family celebrating Christmas dinner. However, two years previously, Charles Drummond of Leith produced what is thought to be Scotland's first festive greetings card, celebrating New Year and reading 'A GUID NEW YEAR AND MONY O' THEM' - the Hogmanay and New Year celebrations at the time being a bigger event in Scotland than Christmas. Drummond's card was produced from a design by Thomas Sturrock and engraved by Alexander Aikman - in many ways, the initial idea for the card came from Sturrock, with Drummond turning this into a commercial product. Aikman’s picture shows the grinning face of a rotund boy, missing one tooth, described in a 1934 edition of the Edinburgh Evening News as having: "an expression of such hearty laughter that the happy combination, by the natural infectious process, produced the desired result on the onlooker, who was greeted with the wish of ‘many happy years”. The manufacture of the card followed a tradition which had started centuries earlier with European woodblock printers, such as Master E.S., who would produce prints with religious scenes and greetings such as Ein guot selig ior (“A good and happy year”). However, it was ahead of its time as a published product, with commercially manufactured greetings cards only really becoming popular in the United Kingdom from the 1860s onwards. Curiously, the printing plate for the New Year card is accompanied by another, following the same design, with the inscription 'A MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU'. There is little evidence that this design was commercially manufactured as a card, however it does suggest that the idea for a Christmas card may be a Scottish one, predating Cole. A proof copy of this Christmas card, alongside a proof of the New Year card, is included in this lot.