Tobacco Ephemera 3

click to enlarge any of these three

Horseshoe Cross Bar was a cut plug tobacco. (It appears that in the 1800s, just as today, cut plug was associated with sports!)

Much of my antique advertising collection is in the form of trade cards, and if you haven't had a chance to view my page on trade cards (in the sidebar), you can access it here.

Horseshoe Cross Bar issued trade cards that looked like the image above, though this example and the two images below are actually from packaging. When the Victorians were pasting trade cards into their albums, they often also included packaging scraps. And aren't we glad they did!

I want to note here that these colors have not in any way been enhanced. The Victorians did not used the 4-color printing process that we use today. So in these lithographed pieces, if a brilliant orange-red was desired, a brilliant orange-red ink was used.

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