Card Number 41, Emma Abbott, from the Actors and Actresses series (N145-2) issued by Duke Sons & Co. to promote Cross Cut Cigarettes 1880s

Curator: Ah, here's something delightful from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection: "Card Number 41, Emma Abbott," a promotional piece from the 1880s by W. Duke, Sons & Co., issued to tout Cross Cut Cigarettes. It’s a petite photographic print. What impressions does it spark in you? Editor: My first thought? It feels remarkably… staged. There’s a palpable sense of artifice about the setting, and it seems rather melancholic, doesn’t it? The muted tones add to the solemnity. Curator: I think it encapsulates that late 19th-century longing for…something just beyond grasp. Abbott's pose is deliberate, a constructed elegance. This card flirts with pictorialism, that movement striving to make photography into art through soft focus and romantic subjects. You have to admire how everyday tobacco cards acted as miniature stages, featuring actors, athletes and celebrities of their time. Editor: Absolutely! Considering its origins as a mere marketing tool shifts my perspective. These cards speak volumes about the era's culture and labor dynamics. How many hands touched this single print, from the photographer to the factory workers assembling these sets? These objects connect mass production and consumerism with celebrity culture in fascinating ways. Did Duke even own the photographic studio? Was Abbott even aware her image would grace millions of cigarette packs? Curator: A point well taken, and these considerations deepen our understanding. Emma Abbott, herself, becomes almost like a crafted image of celebrity in herself. To see it surviving and to reflect about her world through a small ephemeral promotional artefact as this is quite humbling, even magical. Editor: Yes, from tobacco fields to the theater stage – it’s all intertwined. We often overlook these humble items, dismissing them as mere ephemera, yet they whisper of a bygone world. Curator: Ultimately, these small relics invite us to ponder our fleeting existences and the intricate pathways things took. Editor: And perhaps reconsider our assumptions about value. Something produced for a fleeting purpose became a time capsule.