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The Laurier box was extensively trimmed. CMC 1999.124.23 |
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There was extensive paper "trim" inside cigar boxes: liners, flaps, and covers. One seldom sees these today on surviving boxes. The only component that has usually lasted is the large label on the inner lidand a good thing, too, if you're a cigar box scholar. The inner label functioned as the main medium of communication between the cigar manufacturer and the cigar buyer. On it, the manufacturer declared his brand or title to the world, made his claims about his product's quality, and gave his cigars whatever character or cachet he thought would make them attractive to the buyer.
In their heyday, 1880-1930, cigar box labels were partly popular art, partly entertainment, and partly news medium. A display of cigars in a tobacconist's case might depict subjects as diverse as politics, pastimes, pretty women, soldiers, sports figures, food and flowers.
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The look of two well established brands, Bachelor and Stonewall Jackson, evolved from Victorian complexity to mild modernity. [Click your “Refresh” button and watch the changes from start to finish.] |
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During the late 1920s, cigars began to give way to cigarettes as the popular smoking medium, and the cigar industry in Canada consolidated into a few large companies. Hundreds of local brands disappeared. They were survived or replaced by a few dozen nationally advertised products whose labels were designed to appeal blandly to a mass audience. The Golden Era of the Canadian cigar box, at least from a historian's point of view, had passed.
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