Card 580, Daisy Hall, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 2) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1885 - 1891

This small card featuring actress Daisy Hall was made by Allen & Ginter, as part of a series of collectible cards included with Virginia Brights Cigarettes. The cards themselves are chromolithographs, a color printing technique that was cutting-edge at the time. Think about the vast scale of production involved: from the harvesting of tobacco, to the manufacture of cigarettes, to the printing of these cards, all of it feeding into the growing consumer culture. The image of Daisy Hall is a product of this system. It relies on the circulation of celebrity images and the mass production of goods. The card would have been collected by consumers, pasted into albums, and traded. What’s interesting here is the way an image of artistry, of theatre, is integrated into an industrial, consumerist system. The making and distribution of this card blurs the boundaries between art, industry, and commerce.