Rolling Paper Graphics

Rolling Paper Graphics is typographic dream. For decades typographers and designers have been waiting for a publication just like this one - they just didn't know it until now. Interestingly, many of the examples featured demonstrate a highly sophisticated command of visual graphics, particularly those that date back to the 19th Century. Rolling paper was clearly a highly prized consumer product and an enormous amount of care was taken to create a look and feel that would appeal.
The color, texture and size were all vital to an individual brand's success. This unique collection presents 540 different kinds of rolling paper plus seventy posters. Brands featured include Amber (1876), Cine (1900), Malvarrosa (1903), Bambu (1907), and Remeditos (1908). Another interesting aspect of this title is that it provides the opportunity for the viewer to observe the influence of historical moments on advertising and design.

....José Lorente Cascales s ROLLING PAPER GRAPHICS (Gingko, $24.95) shows it was but one of hundreds of brands produced since the end of the 18th century. The origins of cigarette rolling paper booklets can be traced back to a Dominican priest, Father Jaime Villanueva Estingo (Jativa, Spain, 1765 London, 1824), the author writes. Not all papers were used for marijuana. In Father Villanueva s day, tobacco smokers laboriously and wastefully cut sections of large sheets of paper to roll their cigarettes. He devised a more convenient method of peeling small sheets from pocket-size booklet dispensers.

By the mid-1800s rolling papers were big business, and many were produced throughout the world, distinguished by unique graphic motifs. While a few of the variations in this book will be recognizable to pot connoisseurs, an overwhelming majority are unfamiliar (and no longer used). Like other small-scale commercial graphic artifacts from the late 19th and early 20th centuries (razor blade wrappers, matchbox covers), many of these were adorned with fanciful decorative typography and exotic images. This book adds another interesting subchapter to graphic design history. --Steven Heller, New York Times