Syria, from the Dancing Girls of the World series (N185) issued by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. 1889

Curator: This watercolor print is titled "Syria, from the Dancing Girls of the World series," created around 1889 by Wm. S. Kimball & Co. Editor: The pose, those impossibly long legs! It has a dreamlike quality, almost a memory rather than a realistic portrayal. And those pale tones...it feels oddly fragile, like something about to fade. Curator: Well, these cards were commercially produced, included in cigarette packs, a phenomenon tied to expanding global markets and growing interest in representing cultures. It is classified as Orientalism. These trading cards aimed to categorize and represent global types. Editor: The landscape elements like palm trees, along with a simplified architecture and pose, create this composite image. There’s a real focus on the exoticized figure. How do you see its imagery in relation to its function as a commercial collectible? Curator: Cigarette card sets like these played into contemporary fantasies, but also helped solidify public understanding of foreign lands during increased global interactions. In this set, the company exoticizes women across the world for its American consumer base. There’s a whole debate of Orientalism tied into it. Editor: Absolutely, you get that sense of classification and commodification playing out together. Syria here becomes a single figure, distilled to just a few symbolic elements, readily consumable as part of the larger set. A fantasy rather than a lived reality. Curator: I find it fascinating how something designed as a commercial novelty can act as such a time capsule for understanding cultural exchange at the end of the 19th Century. Editor: For me, it’s the dissonance between this idealized figure and the mass-produced nature of the image. It creates this poignant sense of something both carefully crafted and utterly ephemeral.