19th Century Cigar Labels

As my regular readers know, I collect antique advertising, mostly in the form of lithographed trade cards, which you can read about in my sidebar, or here. I don't go out of my way to collect cigar labels because I don't want to stray too far from my field of collecting. But every so often I come across early cigar labels, those that were lithographed on plain rag paper like the rest of the collection. I'd like to share a few from my collection, and I estimate that these are all approximately 135 year old.

This label and the following one both emphasize the important commercial aspect of the cigar industry in the 19th century. Cigars were of course a major Cuban export, after sugar. In the United States, cigars held a special function for all the industrial shipping that moved south by river. When those vessels were emptied, they were often laden with cigars for the trip back north.

Mercury is the Roman god of commerce, so he is honored here with his own "El Comercio" brand. (I'll have to add that Greek key to my sidebar page on Greek keys!) This Mercury is a little portly, and his helmet appears to be a golden Homburg.

Lithography was a new color printing process in the 1800s, and the influx of rich colored images caused many people to save labels of all sorts, sometimes for scrapbooking and sometimes to adorn their walls. This colorful image was carefully cut out from a bigger label. (We should have known that the gods of tobacco rode in on a dragon.)

I've featured this American beauty before, but it's such a rich example of early lithography that I'll show it again. It's only about two inches high.

I've scanned this Cuban label which was actually lithographed in Germany. Unfortunately, scans absolutely deaden items that are gilded, so I also took a digital image of this spectacular piece of paper, below.

I'm adding the image below, which may or may not be a cigar label. Nonetheless, it's Victorian graphic design at its best, and a message good for today and tomorrow!

Have a Great Day!

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My Cigar Label Design

There's a certain romance to cigar labels and cigar boxes and it has to do in part with changeless branding. Lots of cigar boxes look almost exactly the way they did a hundred years ago, and that's just the way we want it. I've always loved cigar boxes, so I was delighted some years back to be commissioned to paint one for Montesino.

I would have loved to have designed something exotic from scratch, but instead I was asked to render an existing label into full color. Previously, Montesino's image of a cigarmaker was stamped right onto the wood as a line drawing. Montesino wanted to embellish the drawing without changing it too much. Above is the original label, and below is my rendition.

I made the cigarmaker about twenty years younger, I enlarged his window, and I made the landscape more panoramic. I also added a tobacco picker working in the fields. All the leaves that the cigarmaker is handling are gold and embossed. So are the words "100% Hecho a Mano" on the red ribbon (which is why they don't read particularly well in this scan).

The label went through many tracings and approvals, so when it was finished, the client had no real surprises. In fact, the client's only request was to change the man's hair. A strange thing to pick at, I thought, but that was easy enough to do. I repainted the hair. Back came the painting again with the message that the client didn't like the hair. By now I was both perplexed and perturbed! "Who is this person who keeps changing the hair!" I said. The art director explained that it was the president of the company. "Do you have a photograph of him?" I asked. The art director produced a glossy brochure with a photograph of the president. I painted the president's hair onto the painting just as it was in the photograph, and turned in the painting one final time. Later the art director told me that the unsuspecting president looked at his own head of hair and said, "Now, that's exactly what a cigarmaker should look like!"

As I was preparing this posting, I realized that I own quite a few cigar boxes. I've never smoked and I don't consciously collect cigar boxes, but I'm certainly drawn to them. Here are several that I especially enjoy:

 

A coworker from long ago found this in an abandoned house

and gifted me. I use it for all my colored pencils.

This is a faux cigar box, with a montage of old cigar labels.

It also houses art supplies.

My mother treasured this box and used it for stamps.

It's the size of a cigar box but it held fancy cigarettes.

On the Little Dutch box, Rip Van Winkle wakes up

after all those years and immediately reaches for a cigar.

This lovely box is English, and dates to the 1880s.

And I saved one of my favorites for last.

It looks like wood, but it's tin!