Cigarette Cards and Pipe-Themed Series

Cigarette cards are palm-sized cardboard cards that came out of cigarette packs. They began appearing in the 1880s and stopped being produced with the Second World War. The card's original function was to support the packaging: since cigarettes were sold in thin paper packs, a stiff piece of cardboard inserted inside prevented the cigarettes from being crushed.

Once a picture was printed on one side of the blank cardboard and a few lines of description on the back, the result was an object that could be collected as numbered series. A small portion of these series took the pipe and pipe types as their subject; none of the tobacco companies that printed the cards manufactured pipes.

Series Devoted to the Pipe

Allen & Ginter's 1888 series "World's Smokers" is catalogued under the code N33. Copies at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are 7 × 3.8 cm colored lithographs. Ipswich-based W.A. & A.C. Churchman's "Pipes of the World" set, meanwhile, is one of the few series devoted directly to pipe types; placing meerschaum, clay, and briar examples side by side, these cards are considered a visual record reflecting the era's prevailing views for the world history of the pipe. Records indicate that A. Frankau, the firm behind the BBB brand, also published a twenty-five-card series titled "Pipe History" in 1926.