Hut in Daman-i-koh, from the Habitations of Man series (N113) issued by W. Duke, Sons & Co. to promote Honest Long Cut Smoking and Chewing Tobacco

Art Historical Context

This charming 1890 color lithograph, titled *Hut in Daman-i-koh*, comes from the “Habitations of Man” trading-card series (N113) produced by W. Duke, Sons & Co., later part of the American Tobacco Company. Measuring just 2½ by 4⅛ inches, the card was designed to be slipped into packages of Honest Long Cut Smoking and Chewing Tobacco, turning an everyday purchase into an opportunity for collectors to glimpse dwellings from around the world. Color lithography allowed the image to be printed inexpensively yet vividly, bringing distant scenes of simple huts and local figures—here apparently including boys—to a broad American audience. The series blended gentle education with clever marketing, inviting users to assemble a miniature album of global architecture while promoting the company’s products. Today the print resides in the Metropolitan Museum’s Jefferson R. Burdick Collection of printed ephemera. It offers a vivid reminder of how late-nineteenth-century commerce, popular imagery, and curiosity about other cultures intersected in the most unexpected of places: a tobacco card.

About the Artist

W. Duke, Sons & Co.|American Tobacco Company|The Giles Company · 1870–1920

**W. Duke, Sons & Co.: Pioneers of Chromolithographic Trade Card Art** W. Duke, Sons & Co., an American tobacco manufacturer, emerged from the entrepreneurial vision of Washington Duke (1820–1905) and his sons in Durham, North Carolina. After the Civil War, Washington abandoned farming in 1874 to join his eldest son, Brodie L. Duke, in the burgeoning tobacco trade, establishing a factory that for...