Presenting your card was a way for the occupant, owner or businessman, to know who was calling upon him, or her, and whether they wanted to accept the call, or not. You werent visiting people, you were calling on them. Almost everybody who could afford them, had calling cards. They could be small, large, medium-sized, plain, or incredibly elaborate.
At the very least, cards contained the bearers name. As card-cutting and printing technology improved with the Industrial Revolution, cards became more and more elaborate and might include not only your name, but also your address, any professional, courtesy, military or aristocratic ranks or titles, your occupationand by the early 1900s things like your telephone number. It was around this time that the line that once separated calling cards and business cards started becoming more and more blurred, and nowadays, theyre usually one and the same.
In an age before voicemail, emails and paging, calling cards were a way to leave a discrete, neat, polite message, if you called on someone, and they werent available. You left your card, to show that you had been there. You might even write a message on the back, to indicate when you might return, how the recipient might contact you, or the reason for your call. Calling cards became such a fixture of polite society and proper business relations that almost as soon as cards could be manufactured in abundance, card-carriers started needing to find ways to store their cards.It wouldnt do to keep them stuffed into your pockets or crammed into your wallet along with the shilling coins, half-crowns, silver dollars and dimes oh no! To hand over a wrinkled, marked, torn or otherwise imperfect card was a huge faux-pas! It was for this reason that card-cases were invented. Showcase your items with Auctiva's.
The item "RARE BEAUTIFUL VICTORIAN Faux BLONDE TORTOISESHELL SMALL CARD CASE c1900" is in sale since Monday, September 20, 2021. This item is in the category "Antiques\Silver\Solid Silver\Card Cases". The seller is "all_fine_antiques" and is located in Herefordshire. This item can be shipped worldwide.