Tuck Raphael & Sons - R.Tuck

Raphael Tuck & Sons was the best-known British publisher of scraps, greeting cards and postcards. Raphael Tuck, who came from Prussia, opened a shop for pictures and frames with his wife Ernestine in Bishopsgate, London, in October 1866. His sons Adolph, Herman and Henry joined the business, and in 1893 Queen Victoria granted the firm a royal warrant, which is why many sheets call Tuck publishers to the Queen.

Tuck designed its sheets in London but had them printed in Germany, many of them in Bavaria, by chromolithography with relief and gloss. The name and often a series number are printed on the ladders between the scraps, which helps to identify and date a sheet.

On 29 December 1940 Raphael House, the firm's London headquarters, was destroyed in the Blitz, together with most of the original drawings and printing stones. The firm carried on after the war and was taken over by Purnell & Sons in the early 1960s.

The Tuck DB at eph.tuckdb.org is a wonderful site of Tuck cards and die-cut sheets, very helpful to find images of the collection.