Dust pan, from the Novelties series (N228, Type 5) issued by Kinney Bros. 1889

This small card, made by the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company, is a chromolithograph – a color print created using multiple lithographic stones. The image shows a dustpan, a domestic tool associated with labor, transformed into a decorative object. The chromolithography process allowed for mass production of colorful images, making them accessible to a wide audience. The technique involves drawing the image on a series of limestone slabs, one for each color, then transferring each color onto paper in sequence. This was painstaking work. But this ‘novelty’ would have been churned out in vast quantities and added to packets of tobacco as a marketing tool. Note the dustpan's ornamentation: a portrait of a fashionable woman, flowers, and a green bow. These elements elevate the mundane object, obscuring its connection to the menial task of cleaning. Consider the layers of labor involved: from the workers who mined the limestone, to the artists who drew the images, to the factory workers who operated the printing presses, to the tobacco workers who filled the packages. This little card opens up a whole world of social and economic history.