Antique 1900s - 1920s Rurales Embossed Cigar Label 🚬 Mexico's Rural Guard, Woodgrain

Who Were the Rurales? 🐎 Rurales: An Embossed Gold Cigar Label Named for Mexico's Mounted Police

Size: 9" x 5 3/4"

Antique Rurales Embossed Cigar Label, Woodgrain, 1900s - 1920s! These have very slight wear at most, but I am being picky. Please see pictures and videos and judge for yourself.

The whole label is printed to look like a piece of orange-brown wood, grain and all, and right in the middle sits a big oval of stippled gold acanthus scrollwork, embossed so deep you can feel every curl. A black band runs across the center with RURALES in cream capitals, and below it a small oval holds a single fancy blackletter R. Turn it over and the back is plain cream paper with the whole medallion pressed through in reverse.

🤠 Who the Rurales Were

The name on this label belonged to the most famous horsemen in Mexico. The Guardia Rural, the Rural Guard, was a mounted federal police force that President Benito Juárez founded in 1861, modeled on Spain's Civil Guard, to fight the banditry that plagued the Mexican countryside. Under Porfirio Díaz, who ruled from 1876 to 1911, it grew to nearly 2,000 men by 1889 and became as famous abroad as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Texas Rangers.

They looked the part, too. The Rurales wore dove gray uniforms braided in silver, cut like the national charro dress, with wide felt sombreros, bolero jackets and silver buttons running down the seams of their trousers. Foreign visitors called them "the world's most picturesque policemen," and some called them "mostly bandits," a leftover from the rough early days of the corps.

Americans read about them all the time. In April 1895 the New Oxford Item in Pennsylvania ran a letter from Mexico quoting Lieutenant Dwyer, the military attaché at the American Legation, who said the Rurales "formed probably the finest body of cavalry in the world." Every man was picked for his riding, had to furnish his own horse, and was given the post of honor in the big parades. In September 1903 the Sonoma Valley Expositor in California told how a troop under Colonel Kosterlitzky rode into Magdalena, Sonora, after a three-week chase across the north of the state, with twenty-one of Sonora's toughest outlaws tied into their saddles.

The end came with the Mexican Revolution. The Rurales fought for the old government, served on under Presidents Madero and Huerta, and were disarmed and disbanded in July and August of 1914 when Huerta fled into exile. Hollywood never let them go, though. They chase Marlon Brando and Karl Malden early in One-Eyed Jacks, they guard the haciendas in Viva Zapata, and in The Magnificent Seven Yul Brynner's first advice to the village is to ask the Rurales for help.

✨ How They Made Them

Amazing Gold embossed label. The raised parts of labels like this were highlighted with 22-karat gold or bronze leaf, stamped by precision-machined dies in the 38-ton presses lithographers were using by 1892. The colors came off Bavarian limestone blocks 3 to 4 inches thick, as many as 25 of them for a single design, and one label could keep a dozen skilled specialists busy for a month.

Imagine hanging this over 100-year-old antique advertising on your wall as home decor in any room!

Cigar labels show you what antique advertising is all about with the wonderful graphics that lithography and embossing provided that modern printing just can't reproduce. This was mostly a lost art after the 1920s unfortunately, when cheaper metal plates took over and labels were simplified to fewer colors. Cigar Labels are a reminder of a bygone era but the amazing lithography process is unparalleled even to this day in my opinion. Museums and Art Institutes have galleries dedicated to them and more and more of them and collectors are seeking these out to preserve the history.

My pictures seriously don't do it justice. These had to be done on heavy paper stock which makes them stay vibrant and new looking for a long time.

🎨 The Artists

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.