Card Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

Card Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

Allen & Ginter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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 series G29 is not listed in Burdick's "The American Card Catalog," he included notes in his own edition of the book, now included in the collection at the Metropolitan Museum, labeling the series as G29. They are included not as the original banner, but as cut-outs affixed to an album. Each card in the series is numbered and depicts a leather opera glove holding a portrait of a woman. The original banner advertised Richmond Straight Cut Number 1 Cigarettes issued by Allen & Ginter as a branch of the American Tobacco Company. In 1890, the American Tobacco Company purchased Allen & Ginter, as well as many of the large American cigarette manufacturers.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Card Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter CigarettesCard Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter CigarettesCard Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter CigarettesCard Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter CigarettesCard Number 21, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.