Tobacco cards: what was the original art medium?

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Posted By: davidcycleback

For many of the 1800s color baseball cards, like the Tobin Lithographs and Allen & Ginters, there was no original medium. Using special lithographic tools, the artist or craftsman did the art directly onto the printing plates (actually stones back then). The artist added oily substance to the printing plate, and the watery litho ink naturally avoids the oil-- thus creating the desired design. If you have a lithographic pencil, it's much like a regular pencil but the end has the oily/waxy substance instead of lead. You can draw with it just like a pencil or pen.

Prints where there is no photoemechanical reproduction of a work of art, but the design is made directly into or onto the printing plate is known as an 'original print.' The artist likely has sketches or designs he uses to make the design, just as a painter has preliminary sketches, but there is no original medium in the sense of a modern card that reproduces a painting. Woodcuts are also original prints, as the craftsman carved the design directly into the printing plate, using various handheld tools.

These 1800s cards were made the same handmade way a Picasso or Chagall original print was made. And an 1860s Harper's baseball woodcut was made the same handmade way that an original Rembrandt woodcut was made.

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As food for thought, I can tell you that the 1914-15 Cracker Jacks baseball cards have photomechanical reproductions of photographs and the red tinting was more than likely added only by the printing press. There likely was never an original work of art for the Ty Cobb or Joe Jackson that had any red in it.

So the colors on a card often, but not always, existed on the original art.