Order of the Black Eagle, Prussia, from the Military Series (N224) issued by Kinney Tobacco Company to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes

Art Historical Context

This striking small-scale print, titled *Order of the Black Eagle, Prussia*, comes from Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company’s Military Series (N224), issued in 1888 to promote Sweet Caporal Cigarettes. Produced as a commercial color lithograph measuring just 2¾ by 1½ inches, the card was one of many collectible inserts placed inside cigarette packages. Such ephemera encouraged customers to save complete sets while showcasing military insignia and honors from around the world. The subject depicts Prussia’s highest chivalric order, founded in 1701 and reserved for royalty and distinguished military leaders. By featuring its emblem on an everyday consumer item, the Kinney firm blended national pride, martial glamour, and brand advertising—an approach typical of late-nineteenth-century tobacco marketing. The vivid lithography allowed intricate details of medals and ribbons to be reproduced inexpensively, making military history visually accessible to a broad public. Today the card resides in the Metropolitan Museum’s Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, where once-disposable advertising is preserved as both graphic art and social history. Its modest size belies its value as a window into how commercial imagery shaped popular understandings of honor, empire, and collecting culture in the Gilded Age.

About the Artist

Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company · 1869–2011

**Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company (1869–2011)** Founded around 1869 by Francis Sherwood Kinney in New York City, the Kinney Brothers Tobacco Company quickly rose to prominence in the burgeoning American cigarette industry. Francis, a pioneering tobacco manufacturer, experimented with hand-rolled cigarettes using blends of Turkish and Virginia tobacco, scaling to mass production by employing Europ...