Encyclopedia Dubuque
"Encyclopedia Dubuque is the online authority for all things Dubuque, written by the people who know the city best.”
Marshall Cohen—researcher and producer, CNN
Affiliated with the Local History Network of the State Historical Society of Iowa, and the Iowa Museum Association.
Category:Cigar Labels
CIGAR LABELS. In the early 1890s it became technologically possible to screen photo sop that they could be lithographed. This “half-tone” process meant that a blank stock label could add any snapshot, including those from the new Kodak cameras that brought photography to the masses. The cigar selling and smoking public responded enthusiastically to what became the ultimate in personalized private labels.
Self portraits of mustachioed proprietors were popular choices, with children running a close second. Anything that anyone was proud of could be, and was, incorporated into a cigar label. Mementos of events and awards appeared on labels, as did many a hunting trophy and championship animal. Proprietors of stores often put their business or local landmark on a label. Sports teams, clubs and local bands used boxes of cigars displaying their portraits as fund-raisers.
Among themselves, printers and box makers call them vanity labels. Turn-of-the-century label catalogs call them a more polite portrait labels or half-tones. Labels with pictures of people were referred to as portrait labels and those with animals, buildings, events and the like were usually called half-tones in most label catalogs. Collectors generally refer to both as Vanity Labels.
Vanity labels reached their height of popularity between 1901 and 1910. The Great Depression of the 1930s ended their use even further as did changes in box making technology of the 1940s. By the 1950s vanity labels were seldom seen.
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Source:
Vanity Labels. http://www.nationalcigarmuseum.com/Themes/Labels_with_photos.html
Labels from Dubuque included:
Pages in category "Cigar Labels"
The following 7 pages are in this category, out of 7 total.