From button chaser to bookseller
Here's a pair of Victorian trade cards that offer a bit of bookselling and printing history, with an unintended vocabulary lesson thrown in. As usual, these cards offer images that are colorful and attractive (children playing games in this case), but have nothing to do with the business they represent. Oftentimes, the bookseller would have his business particulars printed on the reverse side. With these cards, that information is printed on the illustrated side in only three lines. The reverse side is blank. Both cards were printed by Eugene Ketterlinus in Philadelphia (fine print in lower-right corner), whose building, coincidentally, was demolished in the 1960s for the U.S. Mint building (so... from print to mint). On that same site in the 1850s, a bookseller had plied his trade. Ketterlinus demolished that building and built a new structure in the 1850s, ensuring a long business history at that location from books to printing (from trade cards to money). William Patton, the boo...