Cigar Box Labels & Bands
by Orlando Arteaga
By
the middle of the 19th Century the big cigar manufacturers devised
to place printed labels on the outside of their containers and a
paper band around each cigar to improve the presentation of their
products and to protect themselves against counterfeits. The cigar
industry was already a highly productive one so they decided to
hire the best lithographers who, using advanced printing techniques,
made elegant cigar box labels and bands. This got the attention
not only of customers but also of people with artistic sensibility
who began soon collecting these beautiful objects considered as
true art work. The first society of cigar bands collectors of the
world was the International Cigar Band Society, founded in the United
States in 1934, and one of the first worldwide known collectors
was Louis Rubin, a New Yorker, who collected more than 100,000 cigar
bands by 1957. Before dying he asked that his collection be conserved
in one of the museums of the city.
Images below provided by Ron Schieber
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Common Pictorial Bands 1900-1920 |
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Cigar Bank for bundles, 12 inches. |
Cigar Bands for bundles. Top image, Dearest & Best, for one cigar. |
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1930-50 Cigar Band collector offer. |
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Cover of a cigar band printer catalog containing 12 pages of un-cut bands. |
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