DESCRIPTION: SOLD
Rare antique lithographed trade card for the sloop yacht "Emma Wicks" ca. 1880. Captain Charles Adams & Jason Wicks advertised that "parties desiring a pleasant sail on the ocean or bays or to Cape May, or Long Beach will be cheerfully accommodated."
The illustration is of a moonlit night regatta of small gaff-rigged catboats off Long Island Light, Boston Harbor. Catboats are characterized by their simplicity, ease of handling, shallow draft, and large capacity. Historically, the origin of the catboat type was in New York around 1840. Cat-rigged boats were used for fishing and transport in the coastal waters around Cape Cod, Narragansett Bay, New York and New Jersey. Size is about 3 1/2" x 2 1/2". Verso blank.
The illustration and quotation on this trade card were not unique to John Cosgrove but rather part of a stock design widely used by 19th-century printers who specialized in producing humorous or sentimental advertising cards. Lithographers commonly kept catalogs of ready-made comic scenes—like this seaside mother-and-child vignette with the line “It’s a wise child that knows its own mother at the sea side”—which merchants could customize by adding their own business imprint below. In this case, the printer simply inserted Cosgrove’s name, trade description, and Poydras Market address into the blank advertising panel at the bottom, allowing a small New Orleans fish dealer to benefit from professionally printed imagery at a fraction of the cost of commissioning original artwork.
PUBLICATION DATE: 1880
GEOGRAPHIC AREA: United States
BODY OF WATER: Atlantic Ocean
CONDITION: Good.
No holes tears or other issues.
COLORING: 3- color lithograph
ENGRAVER:
SIZE: 4
" x
3 "
ITEM PHYSICAL LOCATION: 0
PRICE: $
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