Hildesheimer & Faulkner
“Christmas Cards.—‘Here we are again!’ as they come tumbling in, fresh from the hands of the publishers, Hildesheimer and Faulkner. More artistic than ever!” — Punch, 6 December 1890
By the final decades of the nineteenth century, few names were more closely associated with high-quality Christmas and greeting cards than Hildesheimer & Faulkner. Their annual output had become so familiar that even Punch, never slow to offer a sardonic aside, acknowledged the regularity and artistic ambition of their seasonal offerings
H&F Christmas card designs by Alice Havers
The publishing concern was formed in 1881, when Albert Hildesheimer entered into partnership with Charles William Faulkner. Establishing themselves at 41 Jewin Street in the City of London, they quickly positioned the firm as art publishers rather than mere commercial printers, a distinction that mattered greatly in the competitive world of Victorian gift stationery.
From the outset, Hildesheimer & Faulkner sought to align their products with the fine arts. In 1881 they held a highly publicised competitive exhibition of designs at the Galleries in Suffolk Street, London. The scale of the venture was striking: prizes totalling £3,500 were offered for successful designs, an enormous sum for the period and a clear signal of the firm’s serious intent. To reinforce their artistic credentials, the judging panel included distinguished Royal Academicians John Everett Millais, Marcus Stone, and George Adolphus Storey. A hundred prizes were awarded, Alice Havers won the first prize of £200.
Reverse of greetings card advertising H&F’s Exhibition of Designs and Pictures
The winning designs were reproduced the following year, though critical reception proved mixed. One reviewer observed, with some disappointment:
“If the cards before us are a fair selection from the prize designs, it is quite certain that the designers earned their money very easily. While the designs are fair, and are in many cases well printed, they are all hopelessly conventional.”
Such criticism reflects a recurring tension in Victorian Christmas card design: the desire to appear artistically progressive while still catering to public taste, which often favoured sentimentality and familiar imagery. Another reviewer struck a more generous note, remarking that “The higher priced examples are rendered more acceptable by tasteful work at the back,” a reminder that Hildesheimer & Faulkner paid careful attention not only to the central image but also to surface decoration, colour printing, and finish.
Front and back of £75 prize-winning card designed by Kate Sadler
Over time, the firm became particularly known for its use of rich chromolithography, embossed details, and decorative borders, often combining pictorial scenes with floral motifs, classical figures, or gently humorous vignettes. Their cards were typically more elaborate than the cheaper, mass-produced examples flooding the market, and they were aimed at a middle- and upper-class clientele who valued both novelty and refinement.
H&F Christmas cards - circular studies of heads by Alfred Ward
By the 1890s, as the Punch quotation suggests, Hildesheimer & Faulkner had become a familiar annual presence in the Christmas season. Their cards were eagerly anticipated, widely reviewed, and collected—both then and now—as representative of the height of Victorian taste in festive printed ephemera. Examples from their output illustrate not only changing fashions in illustration and printing, but also the increasingly commercialised yet deeply ritualised nature of Christmas in late nineteenth-century Britain.