In the early 1900s Britain’s Godfrey Philips Ltd., a major cigarette concern, introduced B.D.V Cigarettes. The brand was very popular in fashionable society until it was dropped in 1948.
B.D.V stood for “Boyd & Dibrell Virginia”—the U.S. suppliers of the tobacco used in the cigarettes. According to legend, a member of the Philips Family once claimed that B.D.V. was an abbreviation for “Benedictus dominus vobiscum" meaning, in latin, “the pipe of peace.”
In addition to “cigarette cards,” B.D.V. employed the marketing scheme of including in their packaging silks and leathers printed with popular images which could be collected. Like the tobacco silk of Queen Mary that I showed you yesterday (which could, in fact, have been produced by the same company), this example depicts King George V in uniform with his garter stars. It dates to the time of his coronation—1911.
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