Raphael Tuck

Raphael Tuck, founder of the greetings card empire that bore his name, was born in Poznan, Poland, and migrated to London in the 1860s. An accomplished Talmudic scholar, he became a stalwart of the North London Synagogue. In 1871 he was living with his family at 177 City Road (near the Angel), in 1881 at 140 Hemingford Road, Barnsbury, and in 1891 at 19 Balfour Road, Highbury.

The business he started in 1866, selling pictures and frames, soon turned to manufacturing greetings cards, which promised much higher turnover. Tuck plainly had business acumen, but he also had a graphic artist’s eye. He had trained in graphic art in Poland, and retained contacts with lithographers and other artwork professionals there who did much of the firm’s printing. 

Ironically, it took the observant-Jewish Tuck to notice that the Christmas cards of the day were mainly secular in theme, celebrating the jollity of the season. He began producing cards illustrating the New Testament Bible story, and they quickly caught on. By the 1880s, the firm was organising competitions for the best designs, which attracted huge interest and huge sales.

When the next boom came along in the 1890s/1900s – for postcards, which became if anything a greater and longer-lasting craze in Britain and beyond – the business was well placed to ride the market. The firm by this time had offices in Paris, Berlin, Montreal and New York, and the name Raphael Tuck had become a byword for pre-digital social media.