Albania, from the Natives in Costume series (N16), Teofani Issue, for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes Brands 1886 - 1900

This small chromolithograph card of Albania from the Natives in Costume series was made by Allen & Ginter. The composition immediately strikes us with its vertical orientation and flattened perspective. It features a man in traditional Albanian attire against a backdrop of a muted landscape. Notice how the artist uses a limited color palette, dominated by earth tones and subdued blues. The figure's clothing is rendered with careful detail and an interest in pattern, yet the overall effect is strangely static, almost frozen. This tension between detail and stasis reveals the card's function as both ethnographic record and commercial object. The intent may have been to capture a sense of Albanian identity, but it's mediated through the formal constraints of the medium and its purpose as a collectible cigarette insert. The artwork operates as a signifier, pointing to ideas of nationhood and cultural identity, but always within the structured context of commerce and representation.