Our typically Belgian "porcelaincards" are rare and marvelous examples of the very best luxury printing of the mid-19th century.

For reasons I never managed to find out, almost no information is to be found about them in literature nor on the internet.
With this page, I try to shed a little light into this still unexplored area of lithography.

The process was called, 'carton porlaine', or 'carte porcelaine' because it was more or less the first time this type of luxury glossy paper could be made and it had the glossy appearence of china or porcelain.
It appeared typically in Belgium around 1840 (the earliest dated card I saw is from 1837)
Because it became clear that the use of metallic colour powders and lead oxides was dangerous to the printers, most sources agree that the process was abolished in the 1860's. I've seen some rare cards produced more or less in the same manner untill the early 1870's.
What makes the process so special is that the belgian lithographers had discovered a way to avoid having to use different engravings for the different colors.

The tradecards are by far the most interesting and most impressive porcelain-cards. They say a lot about the character and sometimes forgotten customs of the people in the middle of the 19th century.
Fixed prices seemed to be a novelty. Products, gadgets and even commercial tactics we see as modern appear to have been well developed 150 years ago.
The engravings show workplaces, factories, craftsmen at work, shop-interiors, inventions, all kinds of different tools and materials. They sometimes show the only existing view of streets, buildings or places that never were interesting enough to be depicted in historical, regional or touristic illustrations.
They were also largely used for sometimes curiously illustrated calling-cards. We also see them used for marriage, funeral, festivities, balls and other anouncements (sometimes superbly illustrated), and for all kinds of cards or calendars printed especially for new-year by associations, theatres, cafe's, etc... Others were menu's for large banquets, entrance-cards for clubs, races, etc., etc.
They were a luxury-product, for shure. Certainly expensive at the time and not distributed without care !
Some cards are made in the most extravagant sizes (up to 30 x 40 cm !) which suggests they were also used to be displayed as posters.

Strangely, this process was almost exclusively exploited in Belgium.
I think the reason for this is most probably one of fashion growing out of hand. It's easy to imagine some kind of "craze" where lithographers and businesses all wanted to produce and have the most exclusive advertisement cards.
Ghent, Bruges and Brussels were the most important producing towns. But you can find cards made in lots of smaller towns all over the country.
Some top lithographers were Hemelsoet, Jacqmain, Gyselynck, Defferrez for Ghent, Daveluy and Delay-Demuyttere for Bruges, Bevernaege for Oudenaarde and Heger, Schildknecht and Hanotiau for Brussels.
I've seen a few similar cards that were made in Germany and in France but, and this is not a patriotic thing, they were never as colorful nor as decorated as the Belgian ones.
Some cards were also made in Belgium for businesses in the surrounding countries. There is even one for a Moscou hotel ! They were probably ordered by visiting businessmen who became fascinated with our strange and extremely decorative porcelaincards.

The porcelaincards have been collected in the 19th century and in fact as soon as they were made.
The most obvious traces of this early collecting are the rare mid-19th century albums that survived in public libraries and in some large collections.
The cards were mostly glued on large blue, yellow or green paper sheets, and bound in oblong albums containing sometimes over 800 cards.
There are also 2 or 3 rare porcelaincards, making the publicity for "Olin", a stationery-shop in Brussels with illustrations showing the very distinctive porcelaincard-albums and with the text saying "choice of cards for albums".
Unfortunately, most cards were taken out of the albums, and that's how I find them mostly.
During the whole 20th century and up until recently it's always been more interesting commercially to take them appart.
But I think and I hope things are changing. It's been ages since I saw a good complete album.

I've always been very attracted to the 'porcelain-cards' for their extraordinary quality printing.
I've been buying them for over 15 years.
Although they were certainly made in very small quantities (there's one card made to thank the neighbours for their help with a fire, is one example that illustrates the small quatities made), we still see them now and then.
But that's just because they aren't being collected very intesively.
Curiously, the number of collectors has always been very small and somewhat "select".
The main reason for this apparant lack of interest, is that there's almost no information on the subject.
Most people, even in belgium, never heard of porcelaincards !
Until very recently, there was only one 1970's exhibition catalogue (Renoy on the Brussels porcelaincards) giving lots of illustrations and very little informative text.
About two years ago, the museum of Ypres also edited a very well illustrated catalogue of their mostly local collection.
So I presume something finally gets moving.