Jones, St. Louis, American League, from the White Border series (T206) for the American Tobacco Company 1909 - 1911

This image, of "Jones, St. Louis, American League", was mass-produced for the American Tobacco Company, sometime around the early 20th century. Can you imagine the process involved in churning out hundreds of these little portraits? The colours have that muted quality you see a lot in printing from this time. The pink background is almost like a faded memory, a half-remembered summer evening. Jones himself, gazing off to the side, seems lost in thought or maybe he’s just watching the ball. I wonder what the artist thought about while they were making this. Were they a baseball fan? Did they care about Jones, or were they just focused on getting the colours right, the lines clean? Did they understand that these were works of art? The whole thing feels like a dialogue between hand and machine, between individual expression and mass production. It is a part of a long conversation between makers across time.