Have a Cigar… label

 As it turns out, this modest lithograph might be a tad uncommon. It's a pity that it has small bits of damage (I've slapdash-P'shopped them out, but, trust me, they're obvious on the original), probably from where the label was peeled away from its wooden box. From what I can gather, this is from a Cuban product for sale in the US, in the early 1890s, probably '93... (6 years before media manipulators instructed us to "Remember the Maine"). It looks as though just about every Cuban city – and a number of tobacco plantations back then – had its own "Rosa" label. But then, sometimes cities as far north as Monmouth, IL had cigar manufacturers, with their own peculiar labels, so this could very well have been an attractive scam to sell cheap Pennsylvania stogies as high-end Havanas.

bottom reads: GEO. S. HARRIS & SONS, LITH. PHILA.
(click to embiggen)

At any rate, one does have to wonder why that Seminole/Carib (?) on the left, caught out hiding badly behind the lilies, is gripping an American Shield and a toque on a pole, and what bisons and hazel-eyed chicks in fancy polo helmets have to do with a good smoke. I think the guy on the right wants to know WTF, too.

Be Mine (more cards for you, for St.Valentine's Day)

 Again, I've been raiding my supply of ephemera acquired during my quest for postcards, scanning & cleaning them to the best of my abilities via P'shop, and submitting them for your perusal. 

Some of them were single images, pretty much the standard one-sided cards like most of us exchanged in school – for those, I didn't think anybody would want to look at pictures of off-white cut-out cards. There's one that has moving parts, and I took it apart to show how it works, so you get both the together and the separate images. The rest were folded cards, so there are two images per card: outside and inside (yeah! lookin' at Valentine guts!).  

The makers of this one saw me coming,
didn't they?

If you like what you see, and you know somebody else might like this stuff, as well, please copy/share. Click any image (as usual) to embiggen.

The head is a cutout, & the card folds
for pop-up puppr

Held together with a brad, the head
rocks side to side to make the eyes move

It looks really disturbing when
separated

I guess it isn't Valentine's Day w/o pudgy kids…

… and cute, badly-rhyming verses

Not sure whether cute or creepy

this is probably cute

My personal nerdy fave for the moment

Boy meets girl

story complete

Sad face

sad stuffings

This one has tattered doilies

& seemingly unrelated innards

This one's not actually a Valentine, but it kind of sums up my own
relationship history, so it gets included.
It's also probably cut from a box