Trade cards, Cigarette cards, Labels, Coins etc.

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In the Gutenberg and Story of Paper threads I have posted some trade and cigarette cards, but printing and allied trades have featured as well.

The Liebig Company was one of the first companies to give away serial images with its products.

HOW A LIEBIG PICTURE CARD IS CREATED    YEAR : 1906 

This set was released in several languages
    Belgium:        80085016        Phases de la fabrication d'un chromo
    France:            05085065        Phases de la fabrication d'un chromo
    German:            05085065        Wie ein Liebigbild entsteht
    Italian:        800085093            Le fasi della fabricazione d'un Cromo
    Holland-Flanders:    69085084        Hoe een Liebig-kaartje ontstaat

The Liebig set, "Les Phases de la Fabrication d'un Chromo Liebig," illustrates the manner in which trade cards were produced by a nineteenth-century colour-printing method called chromolithography. This method uses the flat surface of specially prepared stones as printing plates. Chromolithographic images are produced by printing each colour separately, then superimposing those colours to make a finished full-colour print. The process is labour-intensive, as each colour requires a separate stone with the image (or portion of the image) drawn on it.
These cards demonstrate the chromolithographic process. Ingeniously, they depict both the steps in the process and the manner in which a printed image is formed, one colour at a time. The image in this case is a cameo portrait of Justus von Liebig, whose product is being advertised, reproduced using twelve colours. The number of colours used in this example is unusually high, the norm for nineteenth-century trade cards being five or six colours.



Card 1: The first card shows the artist composing the subject in his studio. He is drawing a water colour onto a sheet of paper, carefully working on an image of the exact size of the intended print. The portrait of Liebig is printed in gold and yellow and is barely visible.

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Card 2: This card shows the quarrying of the limestone to be used for making the prints. Though many different stones were tested, it was limestone from Solnhofen in Bavaria which proved to be the best. The portrait of Liebig now has had red and blue ink added, and the visage is beginning to appear more distinctly.

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Card 3: This image shows the process of transferring the image to the multiple lithographic stones to be used. The explanation on the verso explains that an outline of the image is transferred, in an inverted manner, to each stone which has been polished with pumice powder. That part of the image appropriate to the colour for each stone is then added to that stone for a total of twelve stones. Liebig's portrait is now quite visible, having been printed with six colours.

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Card 4: This card shows the testing of the stones. Each stone is cleaned with nitric acid, so that the ink will not adhere to the stone except where the image has been drawn on it. Then the stones are tested, and the different colours combined onto sample images in sequence, working from the lightest to the darkest ink colours. Liebig's portrait now appears with 8 colours having been used.

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Card 5: Once the test stones are perfected, the final images are printed on a rotary press, being compared with the test images. Other than the placing of the paper on the press, this process is all automated. The portrait of Liebig is now almost finished, with 10 colours having been printed.

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Card 6: This shows the cards being cut from the larger sheets and then packed. The portrait, with 12 colours used, is complete.

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The backs of the cards give the information.

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Liebig card from series F934/S935 Lederpunzen Brandmalerie dating from 1908 (The Feminine Arts)
This card shows some ladies engaged in the binding of books

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C. 1850s trade card advertising the Belgian lithographic firm of G. Jacqmain which was located in Gand (Ghent). The card was printed on porcelain coated card stock - the intricately embellished image features a portrait of Alois Senefelder (whose name is misspelled on the card).

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R&J Hill Cigarette Card - Inventors & Their Inventions from 1908
Number 23 out of a set of 40

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Inventors & Inventions from Brooke Bond - 1975
Number 5 in a set of 50  History of Printing

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In a series titled Modern Wonders of The World, number 3 was Four Colour Press
I have no information only a code number W608-5 and they were produced in the early to mid fifties

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In the same series as previous post:
Linotype from Modern Wonders of the World Educational Pictures (W608-5).



Apologies for images  - taken from a selling site

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Text on back of card reads:

It is because books are plentiful and cheap that many of us today have knowledge. Most important factor in making cheap books and newspapers possible is the linotype - invented by Ottmar Merganthaler nearly fifty years ago to set type by machine. Today a good linotype operator can set as much type in an hour as can be set by hand in a day. The linotype is operated by a keyboard, like a typewriter. As the keys are struck, brass matrices fall into position forming a line. Molten type metal, forced into contact with these brass moulds, hardens into a line of type corresponding with the letters on the keys struck. Line after line is thus rapidly cast until all the copy is set.

[Dave Hughes]

Interesting! The machine has side magazines, but no side magazine keyboard

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FINE FARE TEA 1965 "INVENTIONS & DISCOVERIES"       Number 36 of 50 was Ottmar Mergenthaler and his Linotype
There were two series, each of twenty-five cards