Trade Card for R. Brook, Engraver
19th century
Medium
Engraving
Dimensions
Sheet: 3 11/16 × 2 1/2 in. (9.4 × 6.3 cm)
Classification
Prints|Ephemera
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Bella C. Landauer, 1926
Accession Number
26.28.308
Rights
Public Domain
Art Historical Context
Step into the vibrant world of 19th British commerce with this charming *Trade Card for R. Brook, Engraver*. Produced anonymously in Britain during the 1800s, this petite engraving measures just 3 11/16 × 2 1/2 inches, perfectly sized for pocket distribution. As a piece of ephemera from Metropolitan Museum of Art's and Prints department—gifted by Bella C. Landauer in 1926—it exemplifies the era's explosion of printed advertising. Engraving, the medium here, involved incising fine lines into a metal plate with a burin, inking it, and pressing paper into the grooves for crisp, durable impressio...