Antique 1920s Pride of Baltimore 🏛️ Geo. Schafer Cigar Co. Embossed Gold Lithograph Label

Why Did Pride of Baltimore Say Don't Bite, Just Light? 🏛️ An Antique Pride of Baltimore Embossed Cigar Box Label, Geo. Schafer Cigar Co., Baltimore

Size: 8 1/2" x 6 1/2"

PRIDE OF BALTIMORE arches across the top in red and gold, and inside a gold oval a young woman in a white blouse and a sweeping red skirt sits in a park, with cypress trees and a tall monument column rising behind her. Gold torch pendants hang on either side, each with a P OF B monogram, there's a little 6¢ shield in the corner, GEO. SCHAFER CIGAR CO. on a gold bar, and PRIDE OF BALTIMORE again across the foot. And up in the corner, a drawing of a cigar end with a hole in it: HOLE-IN-HEAD - DON'T-BITE JUST-LITE. It's embossed and gilded and was never put in a box. Every one of these I have ever seen has a slight ripple in the upper left corner.

Cigar labels are a reminder of a bygone era, and the amazing lithography process is unparalleled even to this day in my opinion.

🚬 Hole in the head

That little corner badge was the selling point. A cigar's closed end had to be bitten or cut off before you could smoke it, and inventors spent fifty years trying to save men the trouble - shoe pegs pushed into the end, glass mouthpieces, paper tabs, silk ribbons. A Hole-In-Head cigar came with the hole already in it, so you didn't bite, you just lit. Frederick Lankering's cigar patent, filed in 1931, even covered a removable plug that left a ready-made draft hole. And at six cents, it was an everyday smoke.

🏭 Geo. Schafer Cigar Co. of Baltimore

The Baltimore Museum of Industry has a Pride of Baltimore cigar box in its collection, made by George Schafer's company - 10 cents straight, Havana fillers, P of B on the sides, the same abbreviation as the monograms on this label. George Schafer founded the firm in Baltimore and ran it in the early twentieth century; in 1922 its factory and salesroom were at 1828 to 1832 Aliceanna Street in Fells Point. In 1929 Schafer bought out H. C. Pfaff's cigar company, which had been making cigars downtown since 1890, and the firm became Schafer-Pfaff. That company lasted until 1963, when T. E. Brooks & Co. of Red Lion, Pennsylvania - the Tebson people - bought it out and closed it.

🏛️ The Monumental City

Baltimore has been called the Monumental City since the 1820s, when its Washington Monument went up in Mount Vernon Place, and a tall column in a park behind a pretty girl was about the most Baltimore picture a cigar maker could print. Pride of Baltimore was a brand made to be smoked at home.

📅 How old is it?

No date is printed, but this is a 1920s label. The printing craft and the style of the artwork say early 1900s to me - I have handled hundreds of labels from this era - and the rest of what's on it narrows that down. The name still reads GEO. SCHAFER CIGAR CO., not Schafer-Pfaff, so it was printed before the 1929 merger, and the firm's one dated sighting, on Aliceanna Street, is 1922. The price agrees: by 1921 the five-cent cigar had disappeared from American counters, as TIME put it in 1925 while the trade waited for the nickel smoke to come back, and a six-cent everyday cigar belongs to exactly those years. Her short bobbed hair is pure 1920s too.

🎨 About these labels

Most of these artists were very good but desperate for work during that era, and got paid very little and received no recognition for their work. Unfortunately, the majority of these artists will remain unknown, but we can keep their art alive forever. It's unused, 8 1/2 by 6 1/2 inches. It's a great one for a Baltimore history wall, a den or a cigar room. The supply is finite - nobody makes labels like this anymore, and once these last unused ones are framed, they'll be very difficult to acquire.