Card Number 13, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series (G29) for Allen & Ginter Cigarettes 1885 - 1895

Curator: This peculiar little piece is titled "Card Number 13, cut-out from banner advertising the Opera Gloves series" crafted between 1885 and 1895 by Allen & Ginter. Editor: My first impression? It's odd, undeniably odd. A disembodied, pale blue glove… and is it holding a tiny portrait? Curator: Yes, precisely! This piece is something of a gem. Allen & Ginter were masters of visual brevity. The colored pencil rendering in this drawing serves almost as a 'pop-up' in a peculiar, gilded frame. Editor: And the portrait is so tiny...it feels almost secondary. All the visual weight is in that peculiar glove with its buttoned opening and little window onto what…the hand itself? What statement are the authors trying to express about gloves? It feels Freudian... Curator: One could definitely dive into interpretations! But let's consider that these cards were essentially advertisements for opera gloves. This one plays a sort of mise-en-abyme: it is an ad, picturing a picture, which hints at other pictures. I understand the work makes use of techniques appropriated from Japanese *ukiyo-e*. Editor: So it's image inception! Advertising a sense of luxury within an everyday object… Clever. Is the hand, offering the card, an expression of power dynamics that gloves enforce in their ritual? Curator: I wonder about this myself: The glove *as* a signifier for propriety… Interesting to consider. Maybe there is an ironic undercurrent beneath this small surface; a kind of cheeky acknowledgement. Editor: Cheeky indeed. A puzzling but fascinating piece of ephemera… Something so deliberately designed to sell can become quite rich and strange, if it’s considered closely enough. Curator: I agree, and this close inspection also allows one to find nuance within something not traditionally intended as "art" – but what is it saying beyond it's intent? Always an adventure, finding the extraordinary within the everyday, wouldn't you say?