Rhode Island, from the Industries of States series (N117) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Honest Long Cut Tobacco

Art Historical Context

This charming 1889 color lithograph, titled *Rhode Island*, belongs to the “Industries of States” series (N117) produced by W. Duke, Sons & Co. to advertise Honest Long Cut Tobacco. Measuring just over four by two-and-a-half inches, the card was designed as an inexpensive, eye-catching giveaway that encouraged customers to collect the full set while promoting the company’s products. Such trade cards were a hallmark of late-nineteenth-century American marketing, blending commerce with popular education by highlighting each state’s signature industries. Rendered in vibrant commercial lithography, the print features allegorical female figures bearing shields—an iconography often used to personify states or civic virtues. The small format and bright palette made these cards both practical for mass distribution and appealing as miniature works of art that families could paste into scrapbooks. Today the example resides in the Metropolitan Museum’s Jefferson R. Burdick Collection, where it preserves a vivid snapshot of Gilded Age advertising, graphic design, and the everyday visual culture that once circulated in tobacco shops across the country.

About the Artist

W. Duke, Sons & Co. · 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...