Plate 24, from the Fans of the Period series (N7) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1889

Editor: This is "Plate 24, from the Fans of the Period series" created around 1889 for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes. It’s a colour print that feels like a caricature, a playful take on high society. What kind of symbolic weight do you think an image like this would have carried? Curator: Look closely at how the fan motif recurs – a literal fan behind the woman, echoed in the brim of her hat. In the Victorian era, fans were a discreet language of flirtation and social signaling. This image, part of a cigarette card series, uses these signals to imbue the everyday act of smoking with aspiration. Editor: So it's not just about selling cigarettes; it's about selling a lifestyle? Curator: Precisely! Consider the flowers on the hat—they're not just decorative. Roses symbolize love, sunflowers devotion. Their prominent display suggests a woman who’s aware of her charms and social position. But do you notice the simplification, the almost cartoonish exaggeration of features typical of caricature? What do you make of this alongside the symbolic flowers and the hidden language of the fan? Editor: I guess it points to the artifice of it all—that the signals and symbols are somewhat empty gestures? It's revealing how society operated at that time and perhaps winking at its own advertising? Curator: Exactly! These cards, like much ephemera, provide little windows into how cultures create and perpetuate shared desires, anxieties and fantasies. This helps us understand a historical continuity of how symbols have permeated our modern advertising culture. Editor: That's really interesting; it gives this seemingly simple print so much more depth. Curator: Indeed. And considering its mass production, we see how symbols democratize, lose meaning and take on new ones.