Friday, September 21, 2007

Mother Lode of Victorian Trade Card Art






I just came across an incredible resource for artists or anyone who loves Victorian illustration, humorous advertising and the color lithography of the late 1800's. I have shown only a few examples of Victorian Trade Cards here. Follow this link to an online reference library of an amazing amount of unique and exciting images:
Click on all of the links, you can't go wrong! A feast for your eyes.
Here's a brief intro to Victorian Trade Cards: "Over a century ago, during the Victorian era, one of the favorite pastimes was collecting small, illustrated advertising cards that we now call trade cards...Some of the products most heavily advertised by trade cards were in the categories of: medicine, food, tobacco, clothing, household, sewing, stoves, and farm. The popularity of trade cards peaked around 1890, and then almost completely faded by the early 1900s when other forms of advertising in color, such as magazines, became more cost effective." from article by Ben Crane

The Art of Amy Crehore

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great artwork, but larger scans would have been nice.

Anonymous said...

You might also want to check out this collection of trade cards at Hagley Museum and Library:

http://www.hagley.org/library/exhibits/patentmed/browse/viewall.html