Victorian leading ladies

The Maker

Founded in Bristol in 1786, W. D. & H. O. Wills was a British tobacco importer and manufacturer which became the first company in the country to mass-produce cigarettes. In 1887, it started adding promotional cards to its products, and then 1897 and 1898, the first series with small playing cards was published. Wills issued dozens of decks in the early decades of the twentieth century, but only a few of them actually functioned as playing cards; the others were simply collectable trading cards designed to appeal to the masculine market, with sports, aviation and women all frequently featured.

The Cards

Wills’ second venture into promotional playing cards was preceded, the year before, by a deck that had shown a collection of ‘charming ladies’ focusing on actresses. Both decks showed the text ‘Will’s Cigarettes’ and ‘W.D. & H.O.Wills Ltd Bristol & London’ on the back of each card.

Each card of a suit shows a different portrait of an actress, dressed up in the fine garments, jewellery and hats of the day. Their serene faces perfectly fit the mould of the ideal Victorian woman, in a period when actresses were beginning to shed the disrepute often associated with the profession, and win some respect for their talents. The suit mark and value is shown in the upper left-hand corner, while a miniature version of the playing card appears in the upper right.

A caption reads ‘Printed in Germany’, showing that the British company had opted for foreign manufacture, no doubt due to cheaper costs. This deck proved extremely popular, and over the following decades W. D. & H. O. Wills would continue to publish cards showing famous actresses, eventually adopting photographic images and captioning each card with the name of the specific woman shown. Despite its success at the time, the present deck is now extremely rare.

[ANONYMOUS] [after] Joseph GLANZ

[Children’s playing cards].

Publication [?Austria, c1900].

Description

52 engraved playing cards with fine original hand-colour.

Dimensions

74 by 43mm (3 by 1.75 inches).

References Van den Bergh p.272.