“France” — W. F. Wheaton, Steam Printer, New Bedford, Massachusetts Original Victorian advertising trade card, chromolithograph on a metallic gold ground, copyright 1879. Approx. 4.45 x 2.95 in. A small child stands as the figure of France, holding a palm branch high in one hand and resting the other on a bundle of rods bound with red and green and fitted with an axe blade. She wears a jeweled headdress, gold bracelets and armlets, a gold bodice with a blue and red rosette at the breast, and a skirt in the blue, white and red of the French flag. She is captioned FRANCE in the lower right corner. The upper right carries the printer's own imprint: W. F. Wheaton, Steam Printer, 52 William Street, New Bedford, Mass. A line at the foot reads: Copyright, 1879, by John A. Haddock, Phila. The reverse is blank apart from the marks of an old album mounting. HISTORICAL CONTEXT This is a printer advertising himself. Stock cards like this one were designed and printed in quantity by publishers such as Haddock in Philadelphia, then sold on with the space left open for a local business to add its name. A job printer was the one customer who could put his own imprint on the card and hand it out as a sample of what he could do for yours. The design belongs to a genre the period loved: children dressed as the nations, each carrying the symbols of the country. The bundle of rods with an axe is the fasces, the old Roman emblem of authority that the French Republic had taken up as its own. CONDITION Toning and age typical of the period. Four round patches of album-mount residue at the corners of the reverse, with faint show-through; light surface soiling; minor edge and corner wear. The metallic ground and the chromolithographed figure on the front remain bright. Please view the images carefully. ABOUT THE PRINTING This is an original chromolithograph, and it was slow, exacting work. Each color had to be drawn onto its own separate stone by hand — in monochrome, the artist judging how much stipple each area needed so the colors would combine correctly only once every stone had been printed. The sheet then went through the press once for every color it carries, often a dozen or more, and every pass had to register exactly against the last. A pass out of register showed. Under magnification the image resolves into irregular hand-drawn stipple, each ink carrying its own dot pattern, the colors mixing in the eye rather than on the paper. There is no regular halftone screen and no four-color rosette, which is what a modern reproduction would show. Modern process printing simulates every color from four inks; chromolithography laid each color down as its own. PROVENANCE This item comes from the personal collections of my family estate, accumulated over more than 200 years — including items that came west by wagon train to Colorado and later to Oklahoma. Now that my parents have passed we cannot keep all of these cherished items. They were well-educated antiques collectors/traders and continued to build their collections over more than 60 years. The vast majority of the pieces are from the Victorian Era, however there are plenty of older and newer items. Everything has been stored in a climate-controlled environment over time. DISCLAIMER Specifications and detailed item descriptions are provided as a courtesy only and are not guaranteed to be one hundred percent accurate. Please do your own research. There are generally no receipts available for any items from original purchases. Any dimensions and/or weights are approximate. The absence of a more detailed condition report does not imply there are no condition issues with the item(s). Please inspect images carefully as they are part of the official item description and best representation of the actual condition. Additional images may be available upon request depending on time and availability. Not responsible for internet mis-translations or mis-identification of maker's marks if found or assumptions of makers or materials — item descriptions will indicate if it is assumed. If you see a problem, please message us immediately and we will do our best to sort out a solution and confirm the information. With the exception of eBay rules, no returns are accepted. Ref#ADV-011