Antique 1920s Blue Ribbon Large Embossed Cigar Label 🚬 "For Men Who Know"

Why Does the Blue Ribbon Cigar Label Wear the Whole Trophy Case? 🎖️ An Antique Large Blue Ribbon Gold-Embossed Cigar Label, M. H. Sevis & Son, Springvale, Pa.

Size: 10" x 6 1/4"

A blue ribbon is a prize - first place, best in show - and this label wears the whole trophy case. BLUE RIBBON across the top, a big blue rosette on a light-blue sunburst, clusters of gold award medals, a gold-and-red crown crest held up by lions, gilt scrollwork, and the tagline FOR MEN WHO KNOW. The ribbon's banner is left blank, and the sheet still has its wide untrimmed margins. Along the bottom in tiny type: DESIGN REGISTERED M.H. SEVIS & SON, SPRINGVALE, PA. Turn it over and the whole design is pushed through in reverse. Every one I have is unused.

🖨️ Sevis of Springvale

M. H. Sevis & Son was a cigar box label house in Springvale, a village in Windsor Township, York County, Pennsylvania - they designed and registered label art and printed it for the cigar makers who bought it. Blue Ribbon belonged to the Goldens of Bonneauville over in Adams County, and Sevis printed it for them. The first Blue Ribbon label of 1909 was a plain navy band on bright green; about a decade later Sevis pulled out all the stops with the velvety rosette, the lions and the gold coins, and the big inner-lid version with For Men Who Know is the one dealers date to the 1920s, and that's where these belong. This is that big one, about 10 by 6 1/4 inches, with the banner left blank.

🌾 York County, cigar capital

Sevis was in the right place. The York and Peach Bottom Railroad reached Springvale in 1874, and in the early 1900s the village had its own cigar factory. York County as a whole had twelve hundred cigar factories by 1907, turning out about three hundred million cigars a year, and in the 1920s the county made roughly a fifth of all the cigars in the United States - the York County Cigar Manufacturers Association called it the home of the five cent cigars. Every one of those factories needed boxes, and every box needed art.

🛡️ The heraldry people noticed

The design caught the eye of the heraldry world too. Cigar Box Heraldry, in The Armiger's News, the journal of the American College of Heraldry, Winter 2014, used the smaller Blue Ribbon label from this same Sevis design as an example, pointing out that the crest is built like a crown without quite being one, and that the name itself goes back to the ribbons that once tied bundles of 25 or 50 unbranded cigars before boxes and brand names took over.

🎖️ About these

They're 10 by 6 1/4 inches, a big piece. Frame one in a deep shadow box so the embossed crown and coins catch the light from the side, make it the centerpiece over a home bar or in a smoking room, or give it to anybody with York or Adams County roots. The supply is finite - nobody's embossing Sevis's Blue Ribbon again, and once these last unused ones are gone, they'll be very difficult to acquire.