Featured Galleries: Style and Sentiment: Victorian Advertising Cards from the Champlain College Special Collections

In the Victorian era, advertising cards exploded in popularity among American businesses and consumers alike. Companies capitalized on new printing technologies — color lithography, embossing and die-cutting — to produce richly illustrated cards that built brand recognition and conveyed product information. A fresh and inexpensive method of direct advertising, these cards were mailed to customers or distributed as free postcards or keepsakes for display on mantels and in scrapbooks. This exhibition features advertising cards from Champlain College’s Special Collections produced by and or Vermont businesses in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.