Black Red Game Bantams, from the Prize and Game Chickens series (N20) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

Art Historical Context

This charming 1891 commercial color lithograph, *Black Red Game Bantams*, belongs to Allen & Ginter’s “Prize and Game Chickens” series (N20), issued as collectible cards inside packs of cigarettes. Produced by the Gast Lithograph & Engraving Company, the tiny card—just 1½ by 2¾ inches—showcases two vibrant bantam roosters in rich reds, blacks, and golds, reflecting the era’s fascination with competitive poultry breeding and exhibition. Such cigarette cards were among the earliest forms of mass-produced trading cards, designed both to advertise tobacco and to encourage repeat purchases through collecting. The use of color lithography allowed for affordable, eye-catching imagery that brought exotic or specialized subjects like rare chicken breeds into everyday American households. Today, surviving examples like this one, preserved in the Metropolitan Museum’s Burdick Collection, offer vivid glimpses into late-nineteenth-century popular culture, graphic design, and the rise of consumer ephemera.

About the Artist

Allen & Ginter|The Gast Lithograph & Engraving Company

Allen & Ginter, the pioneering American tobacco firm based in Richmond, Virginia, emerged around 1880 from the partnership of John F. Allen and Lewis Ginter, evolving from Allen's earlier John F. Allen & Company. Allen retired in 1882, succeeded by John Pope, yet the brand endured under Ginter's leadership, employing over 1,100 workers—mostly women—for hand-rolled cigarettes by 1886. Ginter, a Dut...