Victorian Hand Analysis

This card, dating to 1893, was designed by Barbour's in-house art department.  I'm guessing that the artist who designed it consulted Owen Jones' The Grammar of Ornament. And the back of the card is as interesting as the front. So let's proceed to the hand analysis.

(As the newspaper's horoscope always disclaims, this is just for entertainment — I know you're not really an indolent tyrant.)

Oh, oh! I'm not doing well!

 Well, I'm in trouble, but I hope you did better!

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Going back to the beginning of this posting, many 19th-century graphic designers consulted newly published handbooks of historic ornament. The designer of the Barbours card may have used L'Ornement Polychrome, by Auguste Racinet. Here are several samples from that book:

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Decorative Victorian Typography

click to enlarge

As I've been sharing my collection of antique advertising with you, I've usually concentrated on the fronts of trade cards, which are often beautiful examples of 19th century lithography.

But the backs are sometimes just as spectacular in their decoration and lettering. They're also very imaginative in their design. Look, for example, at the "L" in "Liverpool!"

You'll notice that all of the examples I share in this posting have curved lettering and some degree of bannering.

This example comes from a very small card, only about two inches high. It's greatly enlarged for your viewing.

One final observation that I'd make is that almost all of the typography shown here (if indeed not all of it) is hand-lettered. Just one more reason that I enjoy collecting and studying these little marvels!
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Victorian Soaps

I was looking through my collection of Victorian ephemera the other day, and realized that I could present a grouping of soap ads for you.

This trade card for Tulip Soap is approximately 3¾" x 5½", about the size of a post card.

As I mention in my side bar history of trade cards and early corporate identity, lithography of the 19th century was not like today's 4-color process. Today, this boy's jacket would be achieved by four plates of cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink. But when this card was produced, there was a separate plate of maroon ink  — just for the jacket. For that reason, the color of Victorian printing is often much more vibrant than anything we would achieve today.

Children in every state of undress appear in Victorian trade cards, which is an interesting phenomenon when one considers that in the same period, the sight of a woman's ankle would have been shocking. I'm sure one could write a whole thesis about that.

I favor collecting trade cards that show the Victorian packaging.

Lautz Bros. front

Lautz bros. back

Often the backs of trade cards have been damaged because Victorians of all ages glued them into scrapbooks. But just as often, the backs are more interesting and revealing than their charming fronts.

click to enlarge

This card was so fragile that I put a backing on it to save its bottom corners. But I had to have it because of the unique subject matter and the great design, which is printed in blue and gold ink.
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Happy New Year!

Dear blogging friends,

I wish you a happy new year,

and as this colorful bird

from 133 years ago suggests,

may it also be a jolly one!

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J. C. Ayer's — A Famous Cure-All

I was looking through my collection of 19th century trade cards and noticed that I had several issued by the J. C. Ayer Company.

Small wonder, for Ayer's was one of the most successful American patent medicines of the 1800s. As you can see by the reverse of this charming card for pills, the company made very wide claims (below).

Yes, this dinner pill will cure jaundice, numbness and headaches! As you can see in the next image, Ayer's Sarsaparilla is a remedy for so much more:

I'm not sure if there was much difference between Ayer's Sarsaparilla and Ayer's Cherry Pectoral.

yosemiteantiques.com

Dr. James Cook Ayer (1818-1878) graduated from medical school at the University of Pennsylvania, and rather than practice medicine, he spent his life in pharmaceutical chemistry. He established a factory in Lowell, Massachusetts, and through his very successful merchandising, amassed a fortune of more than $20,000,000.

Ayer's  medicines — which certainly have the ring of quackery — were in fact continually evolving formulas, to the extent that after the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, the J. C. Ayer Company was able to remain in business. In fact, the company continued selling medicines through the 1920s.

richardhowe.com

Dr. Ayer adopted the image of the lion as a symbol of health and strength, and his cemetery monument with a giant marble lion is now a Lowell landmark. To see what happens to the Ayer lion in winter, go here.
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Victorian Metamorphic Cards

Metamorphic cards were popular in the later part of the 19th century, but are rarer finds for today's advertising collector. They were folded to show a before view . . .

. . . and then opened to reveal a surprise ending. 

Buckingham's Dye must have been a popular brand because it's the most common of the Victorian metamorphic cards. Before, and . . .

. . . after!

And don't we suppose that it was very, very dark? The back of the Buckingham card promotes another hair product, Vegetable Sicilian Hair Renewer. Its makes for some interesting reading:

Does it do anything for sore feet or ulcers?
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Victorian Mechanical Cards

Regular readers of this blog know that I enjoy collecting 19th century trade cards. You can read all about my advertising collection here.

Among my rarer finds are what antique dealers call "mechanicals." That term doesn't refer to the products sold, but rather to the fact that such cards had moving wheels of images. The handsome card above, which was printed in Philadelphia, reveals five Hayes products, seen below:

The Keystone Manufacturing Company depicted Uncle Sam within an international community, a popular Victorian theme as the world was just beginning to seem smaller.

Mechanicals are relatively rare because they weren't preserved in albums like other trade cards. They almost always were also distributed with expensive purchases, like reapers.

The mechanicals are literally windows onto American farm life of the 1880s, and the latest technology of that time.

The reverse of the Hayes mechanical reads:

SEE OUR PLANTER EXHIBIT

AGRICULTURAL ANNEX

SECTION E. COLUMN R-7.
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