Friday, February 21, 2014

Spencer Optical Trade Cards: Artist's Palette


This trade card, from the collection of the University of Rochester, opened up a whole new world of trade cards for me! If you look closely, you can see that along the bottom edge of the palette it says "S.O.M. Co." This is the Spencer Optical Manufacturing Company. I was able to find this card because the University of Rochester had identified the manufacturer from those initials, and now I can identify more cards that have "S.O.M. Co." on them as Spencer's. And if the eyeglasses advertised were celluloid, you can bet that they are Spencer's, as the Spencer brothers held the exclusive right to manufacture eyeglasses from celluloid in the 19th century.

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