H. Jacobi, printer's sample for the World's Inventors souvenir album (A25) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes
1888
Medium
Commercial color lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 2 3/4 x 1 1/2 in. (7 x 3.8 cm)
Classification
Prints|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
63.350.202.25.25
Tags
Art Historical Context
This charming printer's sample, titledH. Jacobi* (A25), comes from Allen & Ginter's *World's Inventors* souvenir album of 1888. Produced a commercial color lithograph this tiny portrait (just 2¾ x 1½ inches) captures the likeness of inventor H. Jacobi amid the Gilded Age's explosion of innovation. Allen & Ginter, pioneering American tobacco magnates, inserted such cards into cigarette packs as free promotional collectibles, sparking a craze for trading and scrapbooking. Chromolithography, the era's breakthrough technique for vibrant, mass-produced color printing, shines here in its precise la...
About the Artist
Allen & Ginter
Allen & Ginter, the pioneering American tobacco firm based in Richmond, Virginia, emerged around 1880 from the partnership of John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter, evolving from Allen's earlier John F. Allen & Company. Allen retired in 1882, succeeded by John Pope, yet the brand endured under Ginter's leadership, employing over 1,100 workers—mostly women—for hand-rolled cigarettes by 1886. Ginter, a Dut...