Title
Exchange Cards: Advertising, Album Making, and the Commodification of Sentiment in the Gilded Age
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
Spring 2017
Abstract
This article examines the materiality of advertising trade cards used in the Gilded Age United States and resituates the medium within the post–Civil War culture of sentimental and personal exchange. Mobilizing evidence from over 3,000 cards and numerous scrapbooks, this article demonstrates that market culture commodified sentimental images and themes in chromolithographed cards, enabling consumers to appropriate them for sentimental expression in albums. The function and usage patterns of such cards as album keepsakes thus illustrates an underlying tension in the nineteenth-century ideals of separate spheres and sincere expression.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1086/693448
Recommended Citation
Black, J.M. (2017). "Exchange cards: Advertising, album making, and the commodification of sentiment in the Gilded Age." Winterthur Portfolio 51(1), 1-53. https://doi.org/10.1086/693448 Please note that the Recommended Citation may not be appropriate for your discipline. For help with other citation styles, please visit http://libguides.misericordia.edu/citationguide.