Before mass media arrived — before radio crackled into parlours and moving pictures colonised the high street — there was the cigarette card. Tucked inside every packet of Dunmore’s Gold Flake, these small chromolithographs were, for millions, the first encounter with colour printing and a world far beyond daily reach.
A Printer’s Gamble on Miniature Art
The chromolithographic process demanded a dozen separate stone passes, each layering translucent ink to build warmth that modern offset presses still struggle to replicate. I spent a winter studying a complete run of the 1896 Woodland Fungi series at the Hargrove Society library, and the registration was astonishingly precise for cards meant to be collected by children and labourers alike.
“The finest of these cards rivalled fine bookplates in their execution, yet they were designed to be pinned to scrapbooks with flour paste.”