R. Fulton, printer's sample for the World's Inventors souvenir album (A25) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes

Art Historical Context

This charming printer's sample, titledR. Fulton* (A25), is a from Allen & Ginter's *World's Inventors* album, produced in 1888. Depicting Robert Fulton, the pioneering American inventor famed for developing the first commercially successful steamboat,Clermont*, in 1807, it celebrates the era's fascination with innovation and progress. Allen & Ginter, a Richmond-based tobacco firm, popularized these collectible cards as promotional inserts in cigarette packs, everyday smoking into a gateway for education and hobby collecting. Printed as a commercial color lithograph—a vibrant chromolithographic technique that allowed mass production of vivid, affordable images—this tiny card (just 2¾ x 1½ inches) exemplifies late 19th-century ephemera. Chromolithography layered colored inks to mimic paintings, making high-quality portraits accessible to the public. Part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, it highlights how commerce intertwined with culture, fostering scrapbooks and albums that preserved heroes of industry. These cards not only boosted cigarette sales but also democratized history, introducing working-class Americans to inventors like Fulton amid the Gilded Age's technological boom. A delightful glimpse into Victorian-era marketing and collecting mania!

About the Artist

Allen & Ginter

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...