PAUL
WOODMANSTERNE

Founded in 1953, Woodmansterne are publishers and manufacturers of fine and contemporary art greeting cards. Paul is currently President of the Greeting Card Association, representing a billion-pound industry in the UK - a flourishing market with a higher per capita spend and usage than anywhere else in the world. 

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Paul gained an Instrumental Scholarship ('cello) to study Music at Christ Church, Oxford, under Simon Preston, where he also sang in the Cathedral Choir. He won a postgraduate place to study singing at the Guildhall School of Music and started a career as a freelance concert singer. Quite early on, to help make ends meet, he worked part-time as an audio-visual producer in his parents' colour slide business, putting background music, sound effects and voice-overs to programmes using projected colour slides.

 

He soon became fascinated with publishing pictures and the possibilities of reaching a wider audience than the concert hall. At the suggestion of his wife, Woodmansterne published its first Christmas Cards in 1987, using images from stained glass windows and manuscripts at Christ Church, their old college. 

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"Not having trained in business or in art, I have never recognised or been restricted by rules. I work closely with my sister, Julia (a geographer by training), and we tend to make it up as we go along ñ not, admittedly, always the easiest approach!" says Paul.

 

"Industry and intuition can become an infectious mixture, which tends to attract expertise where we have none, and so the business grows, if sometimes a little unpredictably."