Number 24, Metempsychosis, from the Tricks with Cards series (N138) issued by W. Duke, Sons & Co. to promote Honest Long Cut Tobacco

Art Historical Context

This small color lithograph from 1887 belongs to the “Tricks with Cards” series (N138), one of many sets of illustrated cards that W. Duke, Sons & Co. tucked into packages of Honest Long Cut Tobacco. Measuring just over four by two-and-a-half inches, the card was designed to be both advertisement and collectible, encouraging customers to buy more tobacco in hopes of completing the set. The fanciful title “Metempsychosis”—the ancient notion of soul migration—hints at a card trick involving transformation or surprise, typical of the instructional and entertaining subjects the company chose. Produced by The Giles Company using the newly refined technique of commercial color lithography, the print delivers crisp outlines and bright hues at minimal cost, allowing vivid images to reach a mass audience. The profile portraits and playing-card motifs listed among its subjects reflect the late-nineteenth-century fascination with parlor magic and the growing popularity of recreational card games. Today preserved in the Metropolitan Museum’s Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, the card reminds us that everyday ephemera can document both the history of advertising and the spread of popular visual culture in the Gilded Age.

About the Artist

W. Duke, Sons & Co.|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...