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Victorian Day trade cards In honor of today’s Victoria Day celebration in Canada, we look at the Victorian-era pastime of collecting trade cards.
Along with numerous other businesses, Deere & Company gave customers beautifully illustrated promotional ads in the late 1800s and early 1900s. ‘Trade’, not ‘trading’ While you first might think that "trade" cards are an early version of "trading" cards like ones of baseball and football players stuck in packs of gum, that’s not exactly an accurate comparison. In this instance, "trade" means a business profession, product or service like the categories of farming, medicine, food, tobacco, clothing, household, sewing, and stoves. Trade cards were handed out as advertising souvenirs at all of the major expositions from the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition of 1876 to the St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904. Local merchants handed them out for free as a cheap and effective way to advertise their products and services. Some cards were even distributed by noisy street merchants who walked around looking for potential customers while "drumming up" some business.
Love of lithography Although trade card examples from the early 1800s exist, it was not until the 1870s when printed ephemera met color lithography head-on that trade cards became plentiful and extremely popular. Before this, color had been used very sparingly in trade card production. The love of lithography kicked off thanks to exhibitors at the 1876 Philadelphia Centennial who put thousands of these bright little trade card salesmen into the hands of a product-hungry public. You could find one for every imaginable product —Ýfrom soap to soup! This set off a collecting craze as people saved the cards with a passion right into the peak of popularity in the 1890s. Many an evening was spent pasting the pretty paper into ornately covered scrapbooks. Wise advertising professionals of the era knew that a company, product or service would seldom be forgotten once a collection was started. The 19th century was a busy time of invention and innovation. With new products being introduced daily, trade cards flourished by cleverly reflecting life in America.
Collecting craze Because the Victorian artwork was so colorful and beautiful, many people collected the cards and stuck them in scrapbooks to enjoy while sitting in their parlors. This hobby was especially popular with womenfolk and children as a quiet, educational pastime. One trade card for Chase’s Glue verifies the hobby. Its card says "Chase’s…is the only glue in the world that will hold fancy cards in scrap books without wrinkling, showing through or discoloring." However, most glues or pastes did the job back then, including homemade remedies of flour pastes. Thankfully, many of the cards found glued to scrapbook pages today can be easily removed by soaking in water (see below). Stronger adhesives may leave stains or spots on the card…or damage its surface, which hurts values. The best find is a card that was secured using corner pocket frames, leaving the card itself in mint condition. Stock vs. custom designs At around 3 x 5 inches or so, most trade cards are a little smaller than an average post card and can sometimes still be found in un-separated sets of three or four on a sheet in a matching series of images. The front side often sports colorful artwork and a slogan or stamp of the company’s name, while the back is typically just black text advertising the product, service or company. There are two primary types of trade cards: stock and custom. Stock cards are generic images or artwork that could be used for almost any advertiser. General categories include nature scenes, flowers, children, animals and the like. A blank box area on the front allowed an advertiser to print his signature stamp, while the back was printed with the specific advertising. This explains why you may see the same artwork on cards issued by different advertisers. Custom cards are designed and printed exclusively for the specific company, using the artwork and imagery they desired. Typically, these pictured the product being promoted. As a result, these are usually more creative and therefore, more collectible and valuable too. Some cards are diecut into various shapes or designs (see the Columbus buggy image, above). Others are called metamorphic, meaning they have folding action that adds to the creative design (see Deere farmer gate images, below). Still other trade card designs are called "hold to light" cards that reveal additional information when seen through bright light. Another common design style is "vegetable people" that features artwork of cartoon figures sporting heads of vegetables.
Scenes of social history Memorabilia collectors certainly appreciate the social history aspect of trade cards. Perhaps more than any other collectible, these cards give us a glimpse into the everyday lives of American culture more than a century ago. Trade cards also capture the values, dreams, fears and political agendas of America’s past. Eventually, full-color magazine ads replaced the lowly printed trade card. Post cards became a national craze around the turn of the century, and trade cards all but disappeared from the advertising scene by the end of the 1904 World’s Fair. Young collectors saw trade cards as too "old fashioned," and consumers found the ads in magazines more relevant and timely. Those who still wanted to collect cards switched over to collecting post cards instead of trade cards. Even though trade card collecting first began over 100 years ago, the hobby has seen a significant surge of interest again recently. And as scrapbooks are still being discovered in attics yet today, collectors found a source for many of the trade cards that are flooding the memorabilia market.
For example, a recent search on eBay for "Victorian trade cards" found more than 500 listings! So go forth and hunt for your new hobby… Magnify the dots One way to tell if an image is printed with lithography instead of the newer halftone offset process is to magnify the image until you see the dot size, shape and pattern. Lithographed images have irregular dot size, shape and pattern, while offset halftoned images are made of identical and symmetrical dot sizes and shapes in a grid pattern like a screen. According to the Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, "..lithography, (a) type of planographic or surface printing. It is distinguished from letter-press (relief) printing and from intaglio printing (in which the design is cut or etched into the plate). Lithography is used both as an art process and as a commercial printing process. In commercial printing the term is used synonymously with offset printing." Planographic printing process All planographic printing is based on chemical action, and lithography is based on the mutual antipathy of oil and water. As the name [from Greek 'writing on stone'] implies, a lithograph is printed from a stone (except in commercial processes, where grained metal or plastic plates are employed). The process was invented around 1796 by the playwright Aloys Senefelder, and the Bavarian limestone that he employed is still considered the best material for art lithography.
The slab of stone is ground to a level surface, which may be of coarse or fine texture as desired. The drawing is made in reverse directly on the stone with a lithographic crayon or ink that contains soap or grease. The fatty acid of this material interacts with the lime of the stone to form an insoluble lime soap on the surface, which will accept the greasy printing ink and reject water. Accordingly, those parts of the stone that have been drawn upon have an affinity for ink. Salvage trade cards from scrapbook pages According to Judith Katz-Schwartz, a self-proclaimed collecting diva, in her book Protecting Your Collectible Treasures, a simple soaking process can salvage Victorian-era trade cards from scrapbook pages. Fill a large tub, kitchen sink or bathtub with tepid/lukewarm water and put the whole scrapbook page in the water. Leave and let it soak for several hours. Eventually, the water-soluble glue will release the cards from the pages. Lift the soaked-free trade cards out of the water carefully. Some collectors advise using something underneath like a spatula or screen to support the fragile paper as it’s removed. Then lay it flat between sheets of plain white paper towels (colorful designs may transfer ink to your trade cards!). Weight the trade cards with something heavy to prevent curling as they dry. Change the damp paper towels frequently until the cards are completely dry. This may take anywhere from several hours to several days, depending on the humidity in your climate. But it will be worth it. Ý
Text © 2002 Brenda Kruse. Photos by Brenda Kruse unless otherwise noted. |
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