New South Wales, from Flags of All Nations, Series 2 (N10) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1890

This small card, titled "New South Wales," was printed by Allen & Ginter, a cigarette company based in Richmond, Virginia. It’s chromolithography, a printing process which uses multiple lithographic stones, one for each color, enabling mass production. The card depicts the flag of New South Wales, with the Union Jack in the corner, and the colony’s emblem featuring a golden lion passant guardant and four stars. The imagery romanticizes the British Empire, but the card itself is a product of American industrialization, and of course, tobacco cultivation. Cigarette cards like this one were inserted into packs to stiffen them, but also to encourage collecting. These cards, traded and collected, speak to the rise of consumer culture, and the way that even a small material object can tell a big story about labor, global trade, and the making and marketing of identity. This wasn’t fine art, but disposable ephemera, yet today it offers a fascinating glimpse into the past.