Back in the 18th and 19th Century, aristocrats and the noble wealthy would use "calling cards" (pieces of paper with their family name printed) hand-delivered by servants, to announce their visit to a home or as guests on another family's estate. Commonly, as the practice picked up as proper etiquette, visiting cards were used when a "gentleman caller would come a' calling" after a certain lady (that's retro lingo to say he was trying to get to get laid) and if by chance she was not home when he had come by to court her, he would "leave his calling card" with the house manager, to let the particular Lass know once she returned, that a suitor had stopped by for a visit.
Some old customs are antiquated and silly, while others are painfully charming...like this one, and I wish they'd never die.
After the invention of things like telephones, die it did, but it was quite literally the birth of modern day business cards.
I don't think there is a single adult who hasn't received or exchanged business cards at some point. In the business world it's pretty common place, but still a little suave in my opinion, I always bat my eyelashes when a man hands me his. I like to notice the thickness of the card stock, pass my fingertip over the embossed letter font...feel the watermark. Business cards are serious business, a well designed card says a lot about a man's taste and branding.
On the opposite end of this details sharing game; you'll find me poured into a pencil dress sitting inside a lobby bar of some distant international concrete jungle...sipping on an Old Fashioned and reading a well worn copy of a favourite book. If you know what's good for you, you'd have taken a seat across me at the bar, ordered your poison and exchanged winks...we'd sit and sip silently, catching eyes occasionally, making me blush and finger open another page of my read. 45 minutes later as I rise to leave and pay my bartender, I'd slip my own business card under your cocktail napkin before I slink off into the night to anticipate running into you again.
mine: medium-heavy card stock, ivory, minimalist, elegant.
Here is a superb collection of cheeky calling cards from the 19th century; these folks had mad game.
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