Trade Card for Alexander Muir, Engraver
19th century
Medium
Commercial Lithograph
Dimensions
Sheet: 2 15/16 × 4 7/16 in. (7.4 × 11.3 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ephemera
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
The Elisha Whittelsey Collection, The Elisha Whittelsey Fund, 1966
Accession Number
66.630.3
Art Historical Context
Step into the bustling world of 19th-century British commerce with this charming *Trade Card for Alexander Muir, Engraver Produced anonymously as a commercial lithograph, this petite print (just 2 15/16 × 4 7/16 inches) served as a pocket-sized advertisement for Muir's engraving services. Trade cards like this one were the business cards of the Victorian era—widely distributed, collected by enthusiasts, and a clever way for artisans to showcase their craft amid the Industrial Revolution's print boom. Lithography, the medium here, revolutionized printing in the 1800s by allowing artists to dra...