Card Number 622, Miss Snowden, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-3) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes
1880s
Medium
Albumen photograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 2 11/16 × 1 3/8 in. (6.8 × 3.5 cm)
Classification
Photographs|Ephemera
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, Gift of Jefferson R. Burdick
Accession Number
63.350.208.145.3.160
Tags
Art Historical Context
This delicate albumen photograph, issued in the 1880s as Card Number 622 in W. Duke, Sons & Co.’s Actors and Actresses series (N145-3), features the portrait of Miss Snowden to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes. Measuring just over two and a half inches tall, the card exemplifies the era’s innovative use of photography in mass-market advertising. Albumen prints, prized for their rich tonal range and fine detail, were affixed to sturdy cardstock so collectors could trade and paste them into albums. Cigarette manufacturers like Duke distributed these miniature celebrity portraits much as later compa...
About the Artist
W. Duke, Sons & Co. · 1870–1920
**W. Duke, Sons & Co.: Pioneers of Chromolithographic Trade Card Art** W. Duke, Sons & Co., an American tobacco manufacturer, emerged from the entrepreneurial vision of Washington Duke (1820–1905) and his sons in Durham, North Carolina. After the Civil War, Washington abandoned farming in 1874 to join his eldest son, Brodie L. Duke, in the burgeoning tobacco trade, establishing a factory that for...