{"product_id":"antique-1900s-cleola-gold-embossed-cigar-label-treasures-gifts","title":"Antique 1900s Cleola Cigar Box Nail Tag Label 🌹 Victorian Portrait Beauty Embossed Gold Scrollwork Roses","description":"\u003ch2\u003eWhat Does It Feel Like to Hold Something That Was Never Meant to Survive? 🌹\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSize:\u003c\/strong\u003e 4\" x 2 1\/4\"\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv style=\"max-width:315px;margin:0 auto 20px;\"\u003e\u003cdiv style=\"position:relative;padding-bottom:177.78%;height:0;overflow:hidden;\"\u003e\u003ciframe src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/eAsqIJk9wvQ\" style=\"position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer;autoplay;clipboard-write;encrypted-media;gyroscope;picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen\u003e\u003c\/iframe\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eA cigar box label had one job: make a buyer reach for that box instead of the one beside it, and then get torn up when the lid came off. Nobody framed them and almost nobody kept them. So I never tire of a \u003cstrong\u003eCLEOLA nail tag\u003c\/strong\u003e that was never pasted to anything. Embossed gold scrollwork, a woman with a rose at her ear, and a back that still holds the design as a raised mirror image, pressed clean through the paper. These are New Old Stock, unused and never applied to a box. 🌹\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🌹 A Nail Tag, Not an Outer\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe label is a cigar box \u003cstrong\u003enail tag\u003c\/strong\u003e. Nail tags were glued over the nail that closed the box, to keep anyone from tampering with the cigars inside, and that is the name the dealers who handle this exact design file it under. It is the smaller cousin of the big outer label that faced the room. CLEOLA had one of those too: a square portrait outer showing the same woman, which the collector price guides list as \"CLEOLA - OUTER - PORTRAIT.\" That square outer is a different label from this tag, though the two are plainly family.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn fact CLEOLA was a whole set of labels built around her. Besides the nail tag and the square outer there is an inner lid label, a top label, and an edge strip with two small portraits. One complete CLEOLA box that has come up for sale even wears a red \"Now 2 for 5c\" sticker, which is a two-for-a-nickel cigar. And do not mix it up with \u003cstrong\u003eCLEORA\u003c\/strong\u003e, one letter different. That is a separate brand, with its own Havana and Tampa labels in the guides.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🏭 Who Made CLEOLA? Fritz Bros. of Cincinnati Is the Best Lead\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eNothing printed on the tag names a maker, a printer or a town, so here is where the paper trail leads. The one documented launch of a cigar called Cleola comes in the summer of 1900. \u003cem\u003eTobacco\u003c\/em\u003e, the New York trade weekly, ran a letter from Cincinnati dated July 3, 1900, reporting that some \"velvety advertising\" had been prepared for the new Fritz Bros. cigar, Cleola, which was to be launched in the near future. A complete CLEOLA box from Ohio carries this same portrait, plus a factory stamp whose date line is pre-printed \"190_\" and left blank for the year. Cincinnati in 1900, Ohio again on the box, the 1900s on the stamp: that makes Fritz Bros. the best-supported link between this tag and a maker. No document names the two together, so I call it a link and not a signature.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe Fritz name is worth a few minutes of your time. Four brothers, Otto H., Richard, Emil and Theodore Fritz, started the firm in July 1874 at 125 Main Street in Cincinnati. Emil and Theodore retired on New Year's Day 1882, and Otto and Richard carried on. By 1883 a book on the industries of Cincinnati counted factories at 125 and 147 Main Street and a second plant out at Eaton, Ohio, which handled the lower grades. About 325 people worked for them, 225 in Cincinnati and 100 in Eaton, turning out better than half a million dollars' worth of cigars a year from Havana and Sumatra leaf they imported themselves. Their leading brands then were Henry Clay, Richard Third, Joe Jr., Planters' Pride, Stocks and North Carolina. Seventeen years after that list was written, they were the ones announcing Cleola.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe company kept going well into the new century. A 1914 Cincinnati reference book lists The Fritz Bros. Co. as makers of \"strictly high grade cigars,\" and a 1918 Ohio state report counts 257 people on its payroll at 903 Broadway, 230 of them women. Where the story goes after that is still an open thread.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe name turns up once more in 1945. A wartime price-control order issued that June lists \"Cleola\" and \"Cleola - De Luxe\" among the domestic cigars that Harry R. Becker of Dallastown, Pennsylvania, was authorized to sell. Whether his Cleola had any connection to the Cincinnati brand, or ever wore this label, is an open question.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🕰️ Dating the Tag\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJuly 1900 is the earliest anchor, and the \"190_\" on the Ohio box keeps the label's life inside the 1900s. Embossed gilt chromolithography of this kind fits that decade, so I call it an antique from the 1900s. It is a nice historical footnote, too: Cleola was announced in the last summer of Queen Victoria's reign. She died in January 1901, so the brand began right at the tail end of the Victorian era. It is also a scarce tag. Only one other seller has this exact nail tag right now.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e👩 The Woman With the Rose\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThere is a reason the portrait is a woman. The California State Archives' exhibit on cigar box trademarks says portraits of beautiful women were the most popular choice of all for box labels, with idealized women, romantic scenes, flowers and gold accents flourishing everywhere. The CLEOLA woman fits right in: hair swept up, a rose at her ear, set in an oval of embossed rococo scrollwork between pink roses and fern fronds. Nothing I know of names her, or the artist who painted her, so she stays Cleola. Collector lore says the portrait labels worth chasing are the ones where the woman looks like a particular person and not a type. I think she passes that test, and I notice it every time I pick her up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎨 How It Was Made\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThese came out of the chromolithography shops, where one hand-drawn limestone went down for each color and the sheet passed through the press again and again. The gold was embossed last, pressed in with a die so the scrollwork stands up off the paper. Run a fingertip over it and you can feel the relief. It is an original, not a reproduction, and the mirror-image impression on the back is part of how you can tell. Labels like this survive unused when a maker ordered more than it needed, or a brand ended before its print run was used up.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe big names in cigar-label lithography in those years included George Schlegel, George Schmidt, Heywood Strasser and Voigt, O.L. Schwencke, Heppenheimer and Maurer, the American Lithographic Company and George Harris and Sons. Nothing on the tag names its printer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🖼️ Display Ideas\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🖼️ \u003cstrong\u003eFloat-mount it in a shallow shadow box\u003c\/strong\u003e over linen or velvet, so the embossing catches the light the way it was meant to.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🌹 \u003cstrong\u003eGroup it with other portrait ephemera\u003c\/strong\u003e such as trade cards, calling cards and scraps, for a wall that reads as one era.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🗂️ \u003cstrong\u003eKeep it in an archival sleeve\u003c\/strong\u003e in a flat file or portfolio if you would rather study it than hang it.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🕰️ \u003cstrong\u003ePut it on a dressing table\u003c\/strong\u003e beside perfume bottles and hair combs, where a woman with a rose belongs.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e📚 \u003cstrong\u003eBuild a study collection around it\u003c\/strong\u003e with a cigar label price guide and Tony Hyman's \u003cem\u003eHandbook of American Cigar Boxes\u003c\/em\u003e.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003ch2\u003e🎁 Who Collects These\u003c\/h2\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🚬 \u003cstrong\u003eTobacciana collectors\u003c\/strong\u003e who like to complete a brand, from the nail tag and outer to the inner and edge labels.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🎨 \u003cstrong\u003eChromolithography and paper ephemera fans\u003c\/strong\u003e who already hold trade cards, seed packets and sheet music covers.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e👩 \u003cstrong\u003eCollectors of turn-of-the-century portraits\u003c\/strong\u003e, who will recognize a cameo-sized woman from another time.\u003c\/li\u003e\n  \u003cli\u003e🏠 \u003cstrong\u003eDecorators\u003c\/strong\u003e after real period printing for a gallery wall.\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eTo keep it looking this way, store it flat in an acid-free polyester sleeve, and if you frame it, use UV-filtering glass and float-mount it. Dry-mounting is permanent and would squash the embossing.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cdiv class=\"relatedBlock\"\u003e\n\u003ch3\u003e🔎 More From The Vintage \u0026amp; Antique Gifts Archive\u003c\/h3\u003e\n\u003cul\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-white-orchid-embossed-cigar-label-bonneauville-pa-1900s-1920s\"\u003eAntique 1900s-1920s White Orchid Cigar Box Label 🚬 Embossed Gold Border, Golden's Bonneauville PA Chromolithograph Tobacco Advertising\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1900s-1920s-selector-embossed-cigar-label-treasures\"\u003eAntique Selector Cigar Box Label 🚬 J.M. Martinez Co. American Lithographic New York 1900s - 1920s Embossed Tobacco Ephemera\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1900s-lucky-bill-cigar-box-label-back-flap\"\u003eAntique Lucky Bill 🍀 Gold Embossed Cigar Box Back Flap Label NOS 1900s Green Red Victorian\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/li\u003e\n\u003c\/ul\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":40769716453541,"sku":"VAG-7034819313829","price":6.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0597\/2718\/4037\/files\/il_fullxfull.3319817235_kb6q.jpg?v=1785353658","url":"https:\/\/vintageantiquesgifts.com\/products\/antique-1900s-cleola-gold-embossed-cigar-label-treasures-gifts","provider":"Vintage and Antique Gifts","version":"1.0","type":"link"}