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[Uncut sheet of chromolithographic trade cards for cigarettes manufactured by William S. Kimball & Co., Rochester, NY.]

[Rochester, N.Y., ca. 1880.] Printed by Gies & Co., Buffalo. 24 chromolithograpic trade cards, 2.75” x 5”, on a single uncut sheet, 21.5” x 18.5”. CONDITION: Very good, faint damp-stain to lower right corner.

A marvelous uncut sheet of chromolithographic trade cards advertising four varieties of cigarettes produced by W. S. Kimball of Rochester, New York, including “New Vanity Fair Cigarettes,” “Fragrant Vanity Fair Cigarettes,” “Peerless Fine Cut Fragrant Vanity Fair,” and “Three Kings Cigarettes,” each image effectively a still-life emphasizing the attractive packaging.

The William S. Kimball & Company was established in Rochester, New York, in 1846 by William S. Kimball and James C. Hart. For more than thirty years the firm operated at St. Paul and Court Streets, developing into a major tobacco products manufacturer under Kimball’s close supervision. He employed skilled tobacco cutters, patented machinery designed to increase the speed and uniformity of cigarette production, and placed unusual emphasis on attractive packaging and advertising. The company’s success eventually prompted construction of an imposing new factory on Court Street beside the Erie Canal, completed in 1880 to designs by Rochester architect James G. Cutler. Extending 218 feet along Court Street and nearly 500 feet toward the aqueduct, the four-story complex was distinguished by a slate roof, timbered gables and dormers, and a 150-foot smokestack topped by the foghorn salvaged from the earlier factory.

In 1881 Kimball added the feature that became the factory’s most recognizable emblem: a monumental figure of Mercury, the classical god of commerce, commissioned from his brother-in-law J. Guernsey Mitchell. Constructed of riveted bronze plates by John Siddons’ Architectural Galvanized Iron Works, the twenty-one-foot statue crowned the smokestack and became a familiar landmark on the Rochester skyline, ultimately surviving the building for which it was created. Kimball died in 1895, but the company continued operations for another decade, closing in 1905 after nearly sixty years in business.

Charles Gies (1846–1911), founder of the Buffalo lithographic firm Gies & Company, was born in Alsace and came to Buffalo with his family at the age of eight. He entered the printing trade two years later as an apprentice at the German-language Buffalo Telegraph, and about a year afterward joined Sage, Sons & Company, where he mastered the various branches of lithographic production and eventually managed several departments. He remained with the firm until 1872, when it was taken over by White & Brayley, after which he spent several years working for a large New York lithographic establishment. In 1875 Gies returned to Buffalo and, with George H. Dunston, formerly a lithographer with Clay & Cosack, established Gies & Company.

The business expanded rapidly. By 1880 Gies & Company employed some seventy-five workers and occupied three floors of a building measuring sixty by 120 feet. Gies and Dunston remained partners until 1884, when Dunston withdrew to establish his own firm; Gies & Company continued in operation until 1922. The company produced a broad range of commercial lithography, including labels, advertising posters, calendars, pamphlets, and especially chromolithographed trade cards. During the 1880s and 1890s it became a major producer of such cards, developing a particular specialty in advertising for manufacturers of agricultural machinery and farm equipment.

A delightful specimen of printing for the tobacco industry.

REFERENCES: “The Kimball Tobacco Company Factory” at Monroe County Library System online; Last, Jay. The Color Explosion : Nineteenth-Century American Lithography (Santa Ana, CA: Hillcrest Press, 2005), p. 85.

Item #10281

On Hold

Price: $850.00

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