What's In Store with Maggie Moore

Valentine's Day is our favorite holiday for sending cards! We friggin' love coming up with cards for love and friendship, and when we get together to toss around card ideas, we end up with a long list of love cards and are completely stumped when it comes to new birthday cards which we could really use. When it comes to love, the ideas just keep flowing. 

Our Valentine's Day cards can be sent anytime you want to Share Moore Love, but how did this holiday come about? If you go way, way back it was established by the Catholic Church to celebrate two men named St. Valentine who were proponents of love. Kinda boring. 

Fast forward to the mid 19th century when the commercial Valentines we know today were shared, Richard Cadbury made the first heart shaped box of chocolates and the New England Confectionary Company made the first Conversation Hearts.  Check out our new Baltimore Conversation Hearts card.  It's our new fave.

But what I want to talk about is Esther Howland.  With her crafty badassery, she became the Mother of the American Valentine, so I suppose we owe her a debt of gratitude for getting this whole industry started. Esther was an artist and was known as "New England's First Career Woman."  While intricately beautiful European Valentines were available in America, they were expensive, and only the wealthiest of society could afford them. Esther wanted to change that. 

In 1847, after graduating from Mount Holyoke Female Seminary, Esther received her first English Valentine.  From who we don't know.  Esther kept that under wraps.  But like any young entrepreneur, she said, I can make this, and she asked her father, a stationer himself to order her the necessary supplies so she could get to work. Esther used lace paper, paper flowers, and other supplies from England, Germany and New York City.  She wasn't messing around. Her brother agreed to humor his sister and  take samples of the cards she created on his next sales trip for S.A. Howland and Sons.  And wouldn't you know he came back with $5000 in Valentine orders!  

Now Esther needed a home office (sounds familiar) and a group of friends to help with her creations to fulfill orders, and she was in business. She created an assembly line - pre-Henry Ford- of women adding embellishments to each Valentine while she carefully inspected each one. By 1850 she expanded her line to birthday cards, Christmas and New Years cards and May Baskets and her sales grew to $100,000 that year. Guys that's over 4 million today. Go Esther! By the 1870's she made it official founding the New England Valentine Company and in 1879 she moved out of the home office and into a factory.

Esther is credited with the invention of the lift-up Valentine, in which intricate lace is lifted to reveal a picture underneath.  Check out a video here. She even published the New England Valentine Co's Valentine Verse Book in 1879 which included 131 verses of love in multiple sizes.  If you didn't like the verse that came in your Valentine, you could cut one of these out and DIY your own card, pasting it over the original verse. Genius!