Cigarettes
Black Cat Cigarettes, Dingley Place EC1, Clerkenwell, London – UK – Featured Fade, Dionysis Livanis
Black Cat Cigarettes was first introduced to the English market in 1904 by Carreras Ltd , the company of a London-based Spanish nobleman, which was by then well-established in the tobacco market. Carreras built the art deco Greater London House in Mornington Crescent as a factory in 1926, and Black Cat was one of the first machine manufactured cigarette brands in the UK. The cat itself owes its origins to a real black cat that used to reside in Don Jose Carreras Ferrer’s Wardour Street shop. – Ghost Signs: London’s fading Spectacle of History – Sam Roberts and Sebastian Groes – Literary London Journal
Coutarelli Cigarettes – Maden Supérieur – Alexandria, Egypt – Uptown Correspondent, Iman R. Abdulfattah
I had totally forgotten about it until my friend mentioned it yesterday. I love researching the old companies that are being advertised and reflecting on how much the city has changed over time. – Iman R. Abdulfattah
According to Relli Shechter in Smoking, Culture & Economy in the Middle East- The Egyptian Tobacco Market 1850 – 2000, Coutarelli was the only large-scale Greek producer for the Egyptian tobacco smoking market, opening its business immediately after 1890 [p.80, Shechter]. In early February 1918, cigarette roller strikes occurred in Alexandria where the company was located [p.89]. According to Shechter, Coutarelli…
…began machine production in 1922, when it bought its first three cigarette-making machines. In 1945, an article in La Reforme suggested that Coutarelli employed more than 5,000 persons in production and distribution, thus putting the percentage of persons employed in Coutarelli at slightly less than a third of the total number employed in the business.
Former U.S. Diplomat Henry Precht, who was chief of the Iran Desk at the US State Department during the years of the Revolution and the hostage crisis said the following in a March 8, 2000 interview conducted by Charles Stuart Kennedy for The Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training Foreign Affairs Oral History Project:
Coutarelli had been the cigarette king of Egypt and had died after marrying a rather disreputable, it was said, Italian lady whom the family disapproved of. She was afraid that her huge house with an immense garden right around the corner from the consulate would be taken away either by the Egyptian government or by her husband’s family. So, she rented it to an American vice consul for his housing allowance in order to safeguard it. And it worked, at least for us certainly.
Coca-Cola and Mecca Smokes Pentimento – Bleecker & Carmine Streets, NYC – 1997
In explaining a layered fading ad, I’ve always used the term pentimento, a painterly term that describes evidence of a previous work on a canvas seen through an existing upper layer. Viewing these works under varied wavelengths of light, like ultraviolet, infrared and even X-ray scanning, can aid scientists in deciphering both palimpsests and pentimenti. The use of the word pentimento in “street and photography” has also been cited on the Internet as a term “used in a modern sense to describe the appearance of the sides of buildings with painted advertising.” Often when newer ads are painted over older ads, “the paint wears away to reveal the older layers.” Examples of this can be seen in the work I did in the Netherlands in 1998 while photographing fading ads in Amsterdam¹. – From the Fading Ads of NYC (History Press, 2011) © Frank H. Jump
Lowlands Correspondent: Gaia Son – Miss Blanche Virginia Cigarettes – Leiden, NL – Vilmos Huszar: De Stijl & Dutch Modernism
Vilmos Huszár (1884–1960) was a Hungarian painter and designer. He lived in The Netherlands, where he was one of the founder members of the art movement De Stijl.
Huszár was born in Budapest, Hungary. He emigrated to The Netherlands in 1905, settling at first in Voorburg. He was influenced by Cubism and Futurism. He met other influential artists including Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, both central figures in establishing the De Stijl movement with Huszár in 1917. Huszár also co-founded the De Stijl magazine and designed the cover for the first issue.
In 1926 he created a complete visual identity for Miss Blanche Virginia cigarettes, which included packaging, advertising, andpoint of sale displays. The concept drew on the imagery associated with the emergent “New Women”, or Flappers. The Flappers were perceived as young, single, urban, and employed, with independent ideas and a certain disdain for authority and social norms. The smoking of cigarettes was closely associated with their newfound independence. –Wikipedia
M.H. Koski, Inc. – Loans – Chesterfield Cigarettes Ad – Brooklyn Eagle Want Ads “Ask For Miss Turner” – Clinton Hill, Brooklyn – A Brownstowner Find!
A few weeks ago, the billboard that’s hung on the side of the bodega at Grand and Putnam avenues was taken down to reveal this old painted advertisement for M.H. Koski. As it turns out, the old-school pawn shop use to be headquartered in this very location, according to a Brooklyn Eagle ad from May 24, 1946 promoting “liberal loans on diamonds-jewelry and personal property.” If the shop had only stuck it out until the corner became a hotbed of the drug trade in the 70′s and 80′s it could have really cashed in. GMAP
By Brownstoner | 03/09/2012 12:00 PM
Featured Fade – Hit Parade Cigarettes – 7-Up – Koreatown, NYC – M.R. Easton
I thought you might be interested in these small ads for 7-UP and Hit Parade cigarettes uncovered by ongoing work on the La Quinta Hotel facade in Koreatown (17 W. 32nd street). Not too faded (but damaged a bit). A quick bit of web research shows that in 1957 the Hit Parade changed sponsors from Lucky Strike to a brand named for the show. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but most ads and other references on-line are for 1957 and 1958 only. The La Quinta used to be the Aberdeen Hotel, one of the first to allow unaccompanied women to stay there on the same terms as men. – M.R. Easton