The Joy of Liebig Extract of Meat Company Trade cards

I've become a Cartophilist!

Cartophily is the hobby of collecting cards, usually cigarette cards. I'm not bothered by the cigarette cards; they seem to be mostly sports and film related. And I'm not into Trading Cards, which are cards specifically designed for collecting. No, I'm into Trade Cards.  

Trade cards are small cards, similar to the visiting cards exchanged in social circles, that businesses would distribute to clients and potential customers. Trade cards first became popular at the beginning of the 17th century in London. These functioned as advertising and also as maps, directing the public to merchants' stores, as no formal street address numbering system existed at the time.

The trade card is an early example of the modern business card. Some businesses began to create increasingly sophisticated designs, especially with the development of color printing. A few companies specialized in producing stock cards, usually with an image on one side and space on the other side for the business to add its own information. As the designs became more attractive and colorful, collecting trade cards became a popular hobby in the late 19th century, since color images were not yet widely available.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_card

And not just any old trade cards, I'm into cards made by:

The Liebig Extract of Meat Co. Ltd.

 Liebig issued around 2,000 sets of cards in the hundred years following 1872 - the most produced by any trade card company.  They were founded in 1856 and their product named Oxo in 1910.  Liebig sets have been produced in nearly every major European country in its native language.

They are real little works of art and you can pick up cards over 100 years old for a few pounds each. The beauty of the Liebig cards is their staggering variety:

 It is a fantastic collection on plants, animals, society worldwide, history, inventions, famous people, geography, arts and ...name any other subject and I'll show you a few sets on that topic; opera, music,fish, states, habits, architectural, flowers, women ... name a topic it and I'll show  it to you in the Liebig collection.

http://www.chromo.be/

I've got a few sets on order already but my first one arrived this morning. I bought it from a dealer in America, it's an original card from 1907 and cost only £6 including postage.

It's very special because it shows Uni M's home town of Merida, Venezuela and it's got a hummingbird too:

I love the interface between old and new technologies; the card is quite small so the art work is not easy to see, but digitise it and all becomes clear:

Closer:

This part shows the town itself, which is on a high plateau (see text below)

And this area is less than 3cm by 2cm but the image still looks good, which shows the quality of the printing process, called Chromolithography 

Here's the back:

 

 I scanned this into the OCR software but the blue text made it unreadable, so...

I used Photoshop to remove it:  

and then stuck it into Google translate. And here's the result. Fascinating isn't it?

It doesn't all make sense but you get the idea. 

REAL MEAT EXTRACT LIEBIG.

Does not contribute more in the Exhibitions since 1885.

Since the founding of Compagnie Liebig in 1865, total
killing approximately 5,500,000 heads, worth approxi-
mately 425 million of francs.

In Venezuela.

The number of independent non-civilized Indians is about
60 000, mostly living fishing and hunting they perform in
using bows and arrows. For the rest, the population consists in
Most of Métis s'oceupe agriculture which is often hampered
by grasshoppers, such as,., praying mantis "(so called because
that the front legs are identified as the prayer). by
cons, hummingbirds and hummingbirds, these representatives of the tiny
winged, bright plumage that flit from tree to tree with the speed
of lightning, are quite harmless, behind the scenes of our sticker on
sees the city of Merida on extending the high plateau of the same name as
on a huge table at 1600 m above sea level, and
dominated by the peaks of the Sierra Nevada, snow-covered.

And the blue text at the bottom done separately:

OXO broth of the company Liebig

Ct seasoned vegetables consumed. - Ready to minute.
11 / 2 - 21 2 tablespoons coffee in a cup of hot water gives a delicious broth.

More to come!

Comments

[David]

I bet Uni M is so pleased you've got another hobby.

Impressed by the incredible detail on the card, by the way.

[Iain]

Funny you should mention that; she wasn't as pleased as I'd hoped. I offered to take her with me to the big Card Fair in Reading (http://www.getreading.co.uk/news/s/2095295_cornucopia_for_card_collectors_on_sunday) but she immediately went off and arranged another of her little "mystery trips" for the same day. Women huh??

[David]

Why she wouldn't want to spend hours traipsing around a crowded hall looking at, and listening to people enthusing about, something in which she has no interest I simply cannot fathom.

;-)