Jun 19, 2020
Another Album Card Mystery — Not Solved. Butterflies.
As you may have seen in previous stories, I collect all of the possible 1860s and 1870s album cards I can get my hands on. Many I know but there are those elusive ones that I put away but don’t know who to attribute them to.
One such publisher that I’ll call “white border and white letters” has eluded me my entire collecting career. I first found some of the spice plants years ago and thought, based on Jefferson Burdick’s classification, that they were Louis Prang album cards. Alas, they are not. They do, however, have some very noticeable characteristics. Let’s take a look at one.
A few things to note. The first is that there is a background surrounded by a border, which was not common from the cards I have published by Prang, Bufford, Tomlinson, Gibson, etc.
The second is that almost all of the butterfly sets I’ve seen have both English and Latin names for the butterflies.
The third is the block lettering in white. Most likely it isn’t, that’s just the card stock coming through as they made the names part of the background.
The fourth is that there is a period after the description. This is another uncommon thing among album card publishers.
Let’s have a break and look at another one, they are quite nice and I do appear to have a 12 card set here!
I have a small hunch on who this publisher might have been but I’ll need to find some confirmation before I blurt out something that may be wrong.
Here is the checklist so you can go hunt these down:
Agraea Vesta
Cynthia Almana
Cynthia Oenone
Cynthia Orithya
Morpho Rhetenor
Papilio Agamemnon
Papilio Agenor
Papilio Coon
Papilio Epius
Papilo Peranthus
Pieris Hyparete
Pieris Pasithoe
I have a couple other sets from (ostensibly) this same publisher so I’ll share those in the future. Happy Collecting!
