Hallmark launches stock agency featuring its own historical greeting card images

If you’ve ever wished you could reproduce some of those beautiful old-time greeting card drawings or photos for print or Web layouts — or maybe something else — now you can. Hallmark has launched Gillham Studios, a new online stock image agency for artists and designers, featuring exclusive works from its art collection.

The century-old card company has gathered its vast stockpile of hundreds of thousands of images spanning 100 years, and for the first time, is offering them for royalty-free use, but with a twist.

“The biggest difference is Gillham Studios will curate the archives into collections and feature Hallmark artists in novel ways,” according to Chris Shaw the stock agency’s general manager. “Hallmark has over 100 years of experience curating emotionally and seasonally relevant content and that informs how we bring our content to market.”

Featured collections include Tropical Flair, Intimate Instants, Whimsical Watercolors, Living Green and others. You can search categories such as archival, photography, illustrations, patterns, lettering or by content type. The company also features the work of individual artists.

Thousands of new art works will be added every week with all pieces in the collection exclusive to Gillham Studios.

Shaw acknowledges that many of the illustrations used in decades-old cards are out of copyright and would thus be in the public domain free of charge. However, he says that users would be licensing the company’s original, high-resolution reproductions of that art as opposed to potentially lower resolution reproductions in circulation.

“In those cases, use of the image would not be exclusively gained through Gillham Studios, but a customer would get certain benefits, like quality, when purchasing the image through our site,” Shaw said.

The collection is available via subscription plans and credit packs for small and mid-sized companies and custom plans for large companies. Single-image licensing for individuals starts at $10.

Gillham Studios licenses also include the use of its art for physical products within the basic license. Both Basic and Extended licenses allow the use of images on fabric, murals, mugs and pillows and other printed items like Web sites, digital products and editorial usage as well as for personal, non-commercial use.

➤ Gillham Studios