Antique 1920s-40s National Seal Embossed Cigar Label ⚖️ Supreme Court Gold

Why Is the Supreme Court on a Cigar Label? ⚖️ Antique 1920s-40s National Seal Gold Embossed Cigar Label

Size: 8 1/2" x 6"

Somebody decided the best way to sell a cigar was to borrow the Supreme Court's own seal, and I love them for it. It's a big raised gold medallion, embossing so deep you can feel it with a fingertip, and a brand name that sounds like it belongs on a treaty: NATIONAL SEAL.

🇺🇸 What's On It

NATIONAL SEAL is arched across the top in gold on a soft sage green sheet. In the middle a dark green starburst holds the gold medallion, lettered all the way around SEAL OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, with the eagle and shield under a wreath full of stars. A white eagle with a scroll stands on the left, a blindfolded Lady Justice holds up her scales on the right, and pink ribbon swags with little flowers tie the whole thing together. Turn it over and you can see the whole design pressed through the back in blind relief. That's how hard they hit it.

This is an inner label, the one that went inside the lid, so it was the first thing a smoker saw when the box opened. This one never made it into a box.

⚖️ The Real Seal

The seal on this label goes all the way back to the Court's first term. In February 1790 the Justices ordered that the seal of the court would be the arms of the United States, engraved on a piece of steel the size of a dollar, with the Court's name lettered around the margin. It looks a lot like the Great Seal, with one difference: a single star under the eagle's claws, for the "one supreme Court" the Constitution created. The seal the Court uses today is the fifth in its history. The Clerk of the Court keeps it and presses it onto official papers, like the certificates new lawyers get when they're admitted to practice before the Supreme Court.

🖨️ The Printer Dates It

Look at the very bottom edge in tiny type and you'll find CONSOLIDATED LITHOGRAPHING CORPORATION BROOKLYN N.Y. That little line tells you more about its age than anything else on the sheet.

Jacob A. Voice was born in Romania in 1884 and came to America when he was three. He went to work for Wm. Steiner & Sons in 1903, had his own company by 1911, and around 1925 merged with Steiner to form Consolidated Lithographing Corporation. In 1930 Consolidated took over the cigar label business of American Lithographic, and in 1933 Fortune magazine singled Voice out as "by common acclaim America's foremost maker." Voice died in 1942. Sidney P. Voice, the company's vice-president, kept a collection of cigar bands that's now at the New-York Historical Society.

In 1951 Consolidated built a new plant out at Carle Place on Long Island, and labels printed after that carry Carle Place in the foot line. Ours still says Brooklyn, so this sheet was printed somewhere between about 1925 and 1951. You'll see this label called 1910 around the trade, and the design itself may be older, but this printing can't be earlier than the Consolidated name on it.

The gold is bronzing, metallic powder dusted onto sticky ink, and the raised relief was pressed in with a die afterward. That's how the big label houses made a plain wooden cigar box look like a treasure chest.

📏 Details

• Antique NATIONAL SEAL inner cigar box label, gold embossed
• Printer's foot line: Consolidated, Brooklyn, so about 1925 to 1951
• About 8 1/2" x 6", on sage green stock
• New old stock, never pasted into a box
• You'll get one label like the ones shown, all from the same unused batch

🖼️ Frame it for a law office, a study, a library, or over the home bar. It's a great crossover piece for cigar label collectors, lawyers and judges, and anybody who loves Supreme Court history.