So what does desire for a fabulously modern wedding invitation have to do with Oscar Wilde?

Isn't it delicious that the growing trend for highly creative wedding invitations has its roots in the Aesthetic Movement of the early 20th century?

Beautiful papers (inspired by the opening of Japanese design to European artists), fine letterpress printing (the Fine Presses of the Arts & Crafts movement), theatrical graphic design: all reached a zenith in the late 1920's. Many of us have seen the dramatically graphic poster art from the turn of the last century (Beardsley, Toulouse Lautrec, Bradley), but few of us have seen the incredible illustrated books from the early 20th century. These books were laboriously produced in limited editions of a few hundred or so. The Great Depression put an end to these amazingly beautiful book productions.

Commercial printing and graphic design went through a series of upheavals through the mid century; the ascendance of the offset press over letterpress, for example. (During the 60's, 70's and 80's letterpress equipment was phased out and junked.)

But none of these changes were as profound as when Computer Graphics and computerized prepress took over in the 1980's and 1990's.

Art schools and Graphic Design schools underwent an utter revolution. Design technology was completely decoupled from the previous technologies and printing equipment. Proofpresses, drawers of type, were left stranded. What happened, in effect, is that the outmoded printing equipment could be used exclusively for artistic expression.

Fine printers, typographers and graphic design professors all have a great sense of history, but many of their students didn't have a clue about anything that came before computer generated fonts and graphics. More and more graphic design teachers began to offer classes in handset type and the old printing techniques. (Previously, this was only taught to as a trade class in high school!) Art Center, The Center for the Book, many other schools became an important influence on the re-introduction of letterpress as a craft. Book Arts became an important movement again, with beautiful limited editions and unique books as objects becoming quite popular to produce. These books are really beautiful, but it is near impossible to make a living producing them. The techniques that people developed began to move into invitation design in the 1990's and really took off in the past few years.

Contrary to what the wedding magazines tell you, most invitations from the late 19th century through the 20th century were letterpress printed, not engraved. The invitation stock may have embossed borders and decorative elements, but the invitation itself was usually printed letterpress with handset or linotype. (We have a large collections of early invitations from about 1840 - 1940.) The printing quality wasn't always great.

What has changed, is the invitation itself has become an artistic expression of high craft and aesthetics.

Oscar Wilde would be charmed.

"Artists' books are books or book-like objects, over the final appearance of which an artist has had a high degree of control; where the book is intended as a work of art in itself. They are not books of reproductions of an artist's work, about an artist, or with just a text or illustrations by an artist."

From: Artists' books: the book as a work of art, 1963-1995 by Stephen Bury

In other words, the book as a stand alone object.

For further reading: Artist's Books on BNet