A chance find by Sarah Pringle, current owner of Spencer Thorn Bookshop in Bude, Cornwall, has revealed an interesting insight into the greeting card business of the past.
Sarah came across the clipping from the June 1968 edition of Stationery Trade Review, which features a photo of her father and the sales rep for the now defunct card company W.N Sharpe (that was later acquired by Hallmark) proudly showing off the store’s new greeting card installation.
The clipping also reveals that the installation forms the main part of the greeting card section of the new shop which opened May 11 – making the shop 50 years old this year, something that Sarah hadn’t realised. “It is the very same shop now, just an extended version,” says Sarah. “We plan to have some sort of celebration in the autumn, but not quite sure exactly what at the moment.”
W.N Sharpe was established in Bradford in the 1920s and was one of the leading names of the card industry in its time. In 1937 the company built a new building for its headquarters in Bradford, which later became known as the iconic Hallmark House after Hallmark took over the company in 1984.
Hallmark relocated its Bradford operations from Hallmark House to Dawson Lane, Dudley Hill in 2016 and put the Grade 2 listed Hallmark House up for sale. The property sold for £6.5 million in May this year and been bought by The Investment Room, a Yorkshire-based residential property investor and there are now plans to build between 150 and 200 homes on the site, both in Hallmark House and an adjacent warehouse, together with a new-build development.
