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Antique 1880s Ball’s Health Preserving Corsets Victorian Trade Card
$39.00 USD
Original late-19th-century advertising trade card for Ball’s Health Preserving Corsets, a product of the Chicago Corset Company. The colorful lithographed front depicts an elegantly dressed Victorian woman beside a scroll advertising the company’s guarantee, with a small dog seated on an upholstered chair.
The reverse promotes “Eight Excellent Reasons why every Lady should wear Ball’s Health Preserving Corsets” and is retailer-imprinted Dey Brothers & Co., Syracuse, N.Y. This localized merchant advertising makes the card more interesting than a generic example.
The lower front identifies Shober & Carqueville Litho. Co., Chicago, a noted Chicago lithographic printer. Museum records date Ball’s Health Preserving Corset trade cards of this type broadly to 1880–1900; comparable imagery is specifically associated with the late 1880s