Object of the Day: A Victorian Trade Card

Lately, I’ve been very drawn to Victorian scraps and trade cards and have added a several examples of each to my collection. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do with them. But, I’m attracted to their colors and the fact that these are items that were produced with no intention of permanence, and, yet, they survive.

Here’s a lovely little trade card. What’s curious about it is that the back is unprinted. Trade cards, typically, and especially in the later Nineteenth Century, advertised for a business on the reverse. In this example, the reverse is blank except for the long-ago smeared signature of an individual. These cards were often left in lieu of calling cards, often by business, but, in cases such as this, were sometimes left by friends as a token or memento. Amazingly, this has been saved and preserved for over a century.

The card is vividly printed with a classical scene of a lad on some unknown shore. The colors are typical of the 1870s and 1880s. And, so, since we don’t know who left it, for whom or why, let’s just enjoy its imagery as its recipient obviously once did.