About Victorian Chromo Trade Card
The 1880s American trade card was advertising you were meant to keep. Printed by chromolithography on glazed, enamelled stock, embossed and die-cut into scalloped silhouettes, it sold soap and thread and patent medicine with flower sprays, ribbons and flushed children.
Prang of Boston ran the process to twenty colours. The palette is gold and red: bronze-powder metallic ink laid flat over carmine, madder lake and early aniline rose. Nothing is empty — the printing filled the card to its cut edge.
- Origin
- Boston, New York and Philadelphia, United States
- Era
- 1880s (chromolithography's American commercial peak)
- Key figures
- Louis Prang
- Movements
- Chromolithography · Early consumer advertising · Die-cut embossed scraps and album collecting
Victorian Chromo Trade Card design spec
Colors
Background
Surface
Primary
Secondary
Accent
Text
Typography
Abril FatfaceHeadings
Playfair DisplayBody
Courier PrimeMono
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