Lizzie McCall, from the Actors and Actresses series (N45, Type 8) for Virginia Brights Cigarettes 1885 - 1891

Curator: Well, if that isn’t the past served up in sepia! This is Lizzie McCall, from the Actors and Actresses series, produced between 1885 and 1891 by Allen & Ginter for Virginia Brights Cigarettes. Editor: My first thought? Opulence meets… discomfort? All those flowers plastered on what looks like a very restrictive corset. You can practically smell the perfume battling the tobacco. Curator: Exactly! These cards were tucked into cigarette packs as collectible premiums. Think of them as early forms of celebrity endorsement meets…ephemera. Editor: Ephemera with a wink, wouldn't you say? The photography and print medium underscores the mass production angle—glamor commodified, shrunk down, and slipped into your daily smoke. Curator: True! And the floral motif might speak to Victorian notions of feminine beauty. There's this idealized fragility, offset by the very real presence of Lizzie, an actress working and being marketed. The blend is poignant. Editor: That offset’s fascinating. This card flattens a woman, Lizzie, into pure visual culture, right? Consumed right alongside the very stuff shortening peoples’ lives. Does art gain or lose power amidst all this dark and calculated intention? Curator: A superb question. I suppose art gains relevance in how it both obscures and reveals human nature under industrial and market pressure. Think of it, this little thing contains aspiration, fantasy, exploitation... Editor: And labor—both Lizzie’s and those anonymous hands making the cards and packaging! I always circle back to the means. Who touched this? And what did they get out of it? That history is invisibly printed here. Curator: Absolutely. It reminds us how entwined pleasure and commerce were, and are, blurring the lines between performance, marketing and identity. Quite resonant with today, in many ways. Editor: Resonant indeed! A miniature monument to our complex relationship with desire, display, and consumption. Okay Lizzie, you’ve given me a lot to think about.