"10 Gold Embossed Cards for Sabbath Schools and Rewards of Merit" - printed envelope with 10 embossed and gilded cards with pasted on chromolithograph scenes
London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, Ca. 1850s. Cards measure 9.75 cm (3.8 inches) tall, the envelope slightly larger. Cards are overall very good, a couple have writing on the back, versos also show occasional spots and foxing, and one has mild abrasions from having been pasted in an album. Titles are: The Rich Worldling, The Pretty Bud, The Bible (minor spotting to front side), Summer, Spring (mild soil to front), Birthday Hymn, The Happy Land, Gentle Jesus, The Foolish Fly (our favorite), and Autumn. Very rare, no original copies in OCLC located in any institutions, but similar sets discussed with great admiration by Gascoigne in "Milestones in Colour Printing 1457-1859" -- as part of a number of series of reward cards, beginning in 1854, given out at Sunday Schools and which cost a penny each, usually issued in sets of 8, illustrated with Baxter prints (the Baxter copyright had ended in 1854) -- "On each card an improving text or verse is accompanied by an enchanting little view of some appropriate scene, and the whole is framed in an embossed and gilded border....[In 1858] Nelson produced two more series of 'Juvenile Picture Cards.' These also are delicate and delightful, but the style now is essentially Nelson's own. Small bright oval chromolithographs are pasted down into the characteristic gold-dusted panels." (pp. 60-61). Gascoigne does not have a full bibliography of these cards ("...it is hard to tell how many were published..."). Item #H8434
Price: $250.00