Object Image

Card Number 22, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

Series G29 presents cut-outs from a tobacco advertising banner issued by Allen & Ginter between 1885 and 1890. Citing Burdick's "The American Card Catalog": "Banners are paper hangers with a metal binding at top and bottom edges. The popular size was about 30 inches long but a few measured over five feet in length...The tobacco firms were prolific advertisers using a constant procession of banners, especially to publicize their current insert card sets...The usual design illustrates the card pictures [from the series inserted into tobacco packaging] with a large appropriate center picture." Many consumers would cut up banners in order to "collect" the whole series of cards at once. Although ser...
c. 1890
Commercial color lithograph
8.0 x 4.5cm
63.350.202.29.22
Image and text © Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Permanent collection