Card Number 74, Laura Sherrington, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: Ah, this print from the 1880s titled “Card Number 74, Laura Sherrington,” is from the series Actors and Actresses made by W. Duke, Sons & Co. as an advertisement for Cross Cut Cigarettes. The card itself is an albumen print. What’s your first take? Editor: It has such a melancholic feel. Like a sepia dream of a forgotten actress on a summer day, striking a pose that’s both awkward and strangely commanding. I find the slight imperfections really charming. It is both precious and ephemeral, holding history within its card size. Curator: Yes, this card reveals a lot about material culture. Albumen prints like this were mass-produced, turning photography into a readily available commodity, and binding art to commerce through distribution by tobacco companies. They reflect shifts in visual media and celebrity culture. Editor: It does! There is a captivating paradox there—art meeting advertisement, celebrity molded to tobacco culture. Laura’s determined yet vulnerable presence makes you wonder about her reality versus the advertised fantasy. The subtle details of the landscape whisper secrets, blurring boundaries of performance. Curator: The albumen process itself is fascinating. Egg whites were used to bind the photographic chemicals to the paper, influencing tonal range and creating these distinctive warm tones that can’t be reproduced today, with some inevitable decay, giving the cards some unique variations. That fragility underlines labor and process involved, from creation of print to final inclusion within cigarette packs and ultimately impacting waste streams. Editor: Absolutely, the labor…Imagine Sherrington, perhaps exhausted yet hoping her face helps sells cigarettes—the stories we might write based on this one material trace of time! Then, as discarded artifact—it survived so long as a cultural fragment speaking from beyond the grave. It does provoke stories about visibility, identity, commerce, impermanence... It hits unexpectedly hard! Curator: Indeed. Examining “Laura Sherrington” gives glimpses into late 19th century processes. Looking at celebrity endorsement's rise through consumerism. These mass produced, printed objects helped standardize our media landscape that has influence in contemporary cultural production today. Editor: Precisely. You pull the card; you get this world opening for you, of the processes that it went through, what it contains, and what is now… all triggered by gazing on the ghostly Sherrington here on an unassuming old card. It shows the remarkable way artists use ordinary, small-scale processes for greater social meanings and reflections.