Footballers of the Edwardian Series (framed flight)

The card era made the players famous faces before the newsreels could. Tucked into tobacco packets from the 1890s, the footballer card put the Edwardian professionals into every waistcoat pocket in Britain — arms folded, hair parted, posed like monuments to themselves, immortal at two inches tall. The lithography is jewel work: full colour, hairline registration, a portrait miniature produced by the million. Fame used to fit in a waistcoat pocket; here it is framed as a flight, because the album page — not the single card — is how the era actually looked.

Maker

tobacco card lithographers

Date

c. 1908

Medium of the original

Lithograph

Original held by

Ogden's Ltd. (George Arents Collection, NYPL), 1906 · Wikimedia Commons

Credit

Ogden's Ltd. (George Arents Collection, NYPL), 1906 · Wikimedia Commons

Rights

Public domain, verified

Catalogue number

PA-01079