During the nineteenth century, moveable greetings cards became more elaborate, with increasingly sophisticated paper engineering and mechanisms, such as the "beehive" technique. Operated by pulling a string, the paper is cut in a honeycomb pattern, so that it can be raised upwards to create a three-dimensional “beehive”, with the image beneath visible through the small holes.



The Temperley Collection contains 23 beehive cards with a range of quaint domestic motifs, namely flowers, animals, and the home. They are dated between 1813 and 1892.



On one card, dated July 10th 1830, a circular vignette of a country house is shown, with the caption "This pretty mansion, Monsieur Souris Hall, is now on sale, and may be viewed by all; Just lift the latch, and you may see the house, But with due caution, or you'll scare a Mouse". When the string at the centre of the image is pulled, a tiny moveable mouse is revealed.



Another offers good tidings for the coming year, with the phrase "Love, Joy, Peace, crown thy New Year". The circular illustration of two pheasants, symbols of good fortune, reveals, beneath, a basket of primroses.  A Valentine's card, sent to Elizabeth Hotchkiss in 1845 from Tobias, at first presents the rather unromantic image of a spider, whose web, when the central string is pulled, fans out to reveal an illustration of a couple peacefully reading together.



One print has two stanzas of original verse, while another bears the message "I will be true to thee". Many are embellished with embossed designs, paper lace, and intricately-cut borders, such as a transforming wedding card bearing the watermark of Kent-based paper manufacturers Pine, Smith & Allnutt, of which the embossing and cutting is attributed to one “Wood”.



A large and impressive example with metallic foil appliqué looks like a sheet of gold when lying flat, but when the string is pulled, transforms into a radiant beehive, revealing beneath it a range of hand-drawn domestic and pastoral motifs, including a scrapbook, birds, and flowers.



In 1986, the Victoria & Albert Museum commissioned a beehive print, which was printed by Tien Wah Press and published by Alan Hutchinson Publishing Co. The flat image shows butterflies and birds, surrounded by flowers and foliage; when the honeycomb paper is pulled away, another botanical image is revealed beneath.