Agents Sample Book Alling Brothers (1 results)

Blindstamped cloth. 12mo. 17.5 by 11.5 cm. 24 leaves, holding 62 mounted samples of calling cards and business cards, almost all with chromolithographic decoration, whether ornament, fuller pictorial illustration, or both, and often some embossing of the imagery. This is NOT a collector's album, but rather, an actual salesman's sampler from a salesman working for the printer. Most of the samples have printed on them pricing information such as "25 for 10c." If that key bit of sales info is not printed on the card, it is written in pencil either on or below the card. Many of the cards are the type we encounter often enough at ephemera fairs, although not in a sales album created at the time the cards would have been sold for use as intended, whether the sale was to a retailer or the end user. But there are some cards that in one way or another is a little more exciting to us. A favorite for us is a fully color illustrated card with the legend, in Gothic Fraktur lettering, "Summer Scenes", and shown is a lady riding side saddle following a running hound in a fox hunt, with a village in the distant background. Northford, Connecticut is in the New Haven area, and specifically, it is a part of the town of North Branford. In the 19th Century Northford was a printing center especially known for printing Christmas Cards. In fact, it was known as the Christmas Card Capital of the World for a time. The cards in here, with their embossing and chromolithography have a close affinity to commercial Christmas cards of the day, obviously.