John A. Roebling, 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
63.350.202.25.37
Tags
Art Historical Context
This petite commercial color lithograph from 1888 captures the likeness of John A. Roebling, the pioneering civil engineer famed for designing the Brooklyn Bridge—one of the greatest engineering marvels of the 19th century. Produced as a printer's sample (marked A25) for Allen & Ginter's "World's Inventors" souvenir album, it was part of a clever marketing campaign by the prominent American cigarette manufacturer. These tiny cards (just 2¾ x 1½ inches) were inserted into cigarette packs, enticing collectors to amass albums celebrating industrial heroes of the Gilded Age. Chromolithography, th...
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...