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.
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