Card Number 112, Fay Templeton, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-1) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Editor: So this is Card Number 112, Fay Templeton, from a series produced by Duke Sons & Co. in the 1880s. It’s an advertisement for Cross Cut Cigarettes, using a print of a photographic portrait. It strikes me as pretty standard, but I wonder about its purpose in promoting cigarettes this way. What do you make of it? Curator: From a materialist perspective, it’s less about the portrait itself and more about understanding its circulation and function. Think about the cigarette card not as high art, but as a mass-produced commodity. What does it tell us about industrial printing techniques of the time and their reach? How was photography being industrialized? Editor: Ah, I see. It's about the *means* of creating this image, not just the image itself. How does the production method inform the message? Curator: Precisely. Consider the materials used: the card stock, the inks. These were cheap and widely available. Also, consider the conditions of labor. Who were the workers printing these cards? Were they marketing luxury, exploiting the working class in its manufacturing? Editor: I hadn't thought about that at all! The subject matter is glamorous, yet the material reality could have been very different. Did the consumer even think about the people that made these? Curator: Possibly not. The point was to associate their product with aspiration, with the idealized figure of Fay Templeton. This makes a case for further understanding production in a broader socio-economic environment. The small scale here belies the massive industrial undertaking! Editor: This makes me reconsider the cigarette card as more than a simple advertisement, thinking now about the labor involved and the societal structures present. Curator: Exactly! Thinking critically about the production shifts your understanding of the piece from one of simple representation to one reflecting of the era’s social and industrial forces.