Business Advertisement Card: Eureka

1972.21.0144

Object Image
Detailed Images

Basic Information

Artifact Identification Business Advertisement Card: Eureka   (1972.21.0144)
Classification/
Nomenclature
  1. Communication Artifacts
  2. :
  3. Advertising Media
  4. :
  5. N/A
Artist/Maker Unknown
Geographic Location
Period N/A
Date 19th century
Culture Euro - American
Location Not on Exhibit

Physical Analysis

Dimension 1 (Height) 19.4 cm
Dimension 2 (Width) 12.4 cm
Dimension 3 (Depth) 0.1 cm
Weight 6 g
Measuring Remarks N/A
Materials Paper, Pigment--Ink
Manufacturing Processes Printing, Cutting, Writing

Research Remarks

Description

One of the ways trade card advertisers could compensate for the flat, mundane nature of their paper products was by implementing natural imagery. If a feeling of “naturalness” and “genuineness” was conveyed to the consumer successfully, then the advertised product was more likely to be researched and purchased. Chromolithography, the process of printing color-printed ephemera, allowed trade card authors to create colorful and appealing images which helped to circulate the supposed benefits of their wares. This card, for instance, uses floral imagery to suggest that the items advertised are elegant and natural.

Published Description N/A
Bibliography

“A Short History of Trade Cards,” Bulletin of the Business Historical Society 5, no. 3 (April
1931).

Berg, Maxine and Clifford, Helen, Selling Consumption in the Eighteenth Century: Advertising
and the Trade Card in Britain and France, The Journal of the Social History Society, (April 28,
2015).

Chase, Ernest D., The Romance of Greeting Cards, Rust Craft Publishers, 1956.

Jay, Robert, The Trade Card In Nineteenth-Century America, University of Missouri Press,
1987.

Lewis, John, Printed Ephemera: The Changing Uses of Type and Letterforms in English and
American Printing, W.S. Cowell Ltd., 1962.

Mehaffy, Marilyn Maness, Advertising Race/Raceing Advertising: The Feminine
Consumer(Nation), 1876-1900, Signs, 23, no. 1, The University of Chicago Press, 1997, 142-
143, https://www.jstor.org/stable/3175155.

Oatman-Stanford, Hunter, “Extreme Shipping: When Express Delivery to California Meant 100
Grueling Days at Sea,” Collectors Weekly, (June 2, 2016),
https://www.collectorsweekly.com/articles/when-express-delivery-meant-100-days-at-sea/.

Peterdi, Gabor, “Lithography” section of “Printmaking” article, Encyclopedia Britannica online,
2021, https://www.britannica.com/art/printmaking/Lithography.

Artifact History

Credit Line/Dedication Gift of Natalia M. Belting
Reproduction no

Contact

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