Tricks Of The Trade Revealed In Harvard Exhibit

By Nancy Mattoon

A Die-Cut Trade Card For
Colburn's Philadelphia Mustard, ca. 1875.
(All Images Courtesy of Baker Business Library.)

Harvard University Business School's Baker Library has digitized part of an immense collection of advertising ephemera, making images of 1,000 Victorian trade cards available online. The cards represent a "full range of products and businesses advertised through this medium from the 1870s through the 1890s." An online exhibit has also been created to spotlight this New and Wonderful Invention, one of the earliest forms of printed advertising used for nationwide commercial campaigns.

Trade Card For
Centemeri Kid Gloves, 1888.

Lavishly illustrated and lushly colored, with eye-catching images on the front and promotional text on the back, trade cards were produced by the hundreds of thousands and inserted into packages at the factory, handed out by retailers with every sale, or mailed to prospective customers. The images used often had little to do with the actual products, but the point was to attract the eye, and bring the manufacturer's name to the forefront. The industrialization and urbanization of post-Civil War America caused the rapid rise of new consumer markets. Manufacturers began to compete for customers through aggressive advertising, and the first attempts to create "brands" had begun.

Trade Card For Henry Martin's Furs, Ca. 1875.

Technological advances in printing, and the development of chromolithography in the mid-nineteenth century, led to the extensive use of color in commercial advertising. This allowed for greater use of illustrations, and the popularity of color advertising cards spread rapidly. By the early 1880s the chromolithographed trade card was being distributed widely by businesses ranging from small shops to large manufacturers. The 1876 Centennial Exhibition in Philadelphia provided the first large-scale opportunity for commercial lithographers to display their products, as well as for a wide variety of businesses to hand out advertising cards flogging their goods and services.

Trade Card For Preston's
Infallible Yeast Powder, ca. 1880.

According to the Baker Library exhibit, "The great majority of trade cards printed in the late nineteenth century advertised household items, promoting everything from patent medicines, cosmetic products, and packaged foods to wringers, sewing machines and lawn mowers." Trade cards often provided an introduction to the idea of using manufactured products as replacements for items that were previously homemade. New marketing techniques, such as testimonials and premium offers were employed to promote the growing number of commercial products. Special novelty cards and cards issued in series were produced to encourage card collecting, which of course created brand loyalty and more product consumption. Soon, trademarks appeared on cards to maximize brand-name recognition and foster continued use of a particular product.

Trade Card For Brook's Spool Cotton, ca. 1880.

Trade cards featured all of the persuasive tools of the advertising game: alluring women, adorable children, cuddly animals, patriotic symbols, ethnic stereotypes, lush gardens, magical creatures, and exotic foreign destinations were all well represented. Industrialization was celebrated in scenes of urban growth, and the latest innovations in manufacturing and technology were shown as ushering in a new era of comfort and convenience. Home life never looked so good.

Trade Card For
Willamantic Thread, ca. 1885.

The public responded enthusiastically to this early use of colorful, eye-catching images, and collecting trade cards became a craze in the 1880s. Cards were swapped with friends, and collected and pasted into albums. As one of the most popular forms of advertising in the 19th century, trade cards reveal not just consumer habits, but also moral values and artistic trends. This makes them of interest to scholars of business, graphic design and printing, and social and cultural history. The popularity of the trade card peaked around 1890 and then faded by the end of the century, as mass-market magazine advertising became the preferred means of creating nationwide marketing campaigns.

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