Antique 1900s Abe Martin Embossed Cigar Label, Famous Cartoon, Kin Hubbard For Sale

8 1/2" x 6 1/2", New Old Stock, embossed chromolithograph with genuine gold work — most cigar makers of this era used real gold flakes in their embossing, and the depth and warmth here is exactly that, not a printing trick. ABE MARTIN arches across the top in bold red embossed letters outlined in a dotted gold border. At center, a gold oval medallion frames the character himself: bearded, pipe-smoking, wearing a battered brown hat, red mittens on his hands. "BY GINGER" curls across the medallion beside him — his signature exclamation from the strip. Flanking the portrait, two miniature farm scenes unfold: a winter view on the left with a snow-covered "MARTIN'S FARM" sign, a dog bounding through drifts and a goose in the foreground; a summer scene on the right in full green with the same sign, a fishing rod in hand and a bull grazing nearby. Turn the sheet over and the whole design presses through in reverse — real physical embossing, not flat ink.

Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard was born in Ohio in 1868 and came to Indianapolis, where he joined The Indianapolis News. On a December day in 1904, he introduced readers to Abe Martin of Brown County, Indiana — a scrawny, bearded, pipe-smoking Hoosier philosopher who spoke in short, dry, vernacular one-liners about small-town life and human folly. The strip ran six days a week for over two decades, eventually syndicated in as many as 300 American newspapers, and Will Rogers himself called Hubbard "America's greatest humorist" — not a compliment Rogers handed out lightly. Hubbard rooted the character specifically in Brown County, and you can see that world right on this label: Martin's Farm in winter, Martin's Farm in summer, the same stubborn figure standing in both, pipe in mouth, regarding the world with cheerful skepticism. Hubbard died in 1930, and two years later Brown County State Park named a ridge and its main lodge after him — Kin Hubbard Ridge and Abe Martin Lodge — with the lodge's cabins each named for characters from the strip. That lodge still stands. The strip itself continued briefly in syndication after Hubbard's death before its last appearance.

Here's the detail I like best. Indiana's governor and later Woodrow Wilson's Vice President, Thomas R. Marshall, is remembered today for one line: "What this country needs is a really good five-cent cigar." Except that line wasn't originally his — Kin Hubbard had already put almost exactly those words in Abe Martin's mouth. Marshall, a genuine fan of the strip, picked the phrase up in public remarks, and the press ran with it as a Marshall original for years. Hubbard, it seems, got something like the last laugh: Abe Martin was licensed to Indianapolis's Burdena Cigar Factory for an actual five-cent Abe Martin cigar, and "By Ginger" — Abe's own catchphrase, his folksy Hoosier substitute for stronger language — ended up right here on the label selling it.

This is embossed chromolithography, and a label this detailed took real work — each color its own separate stone and press pass, planned and drawn by hand, with the embossing and gold work done as entirely separate steps after the color printing was finished. Indianapolis had a genuine cigar-manufacturing scene behind labels like this one; the city was home to dozens of cigar factories at its peak, and Burdena was one of the houses that held a licensing deal with the most beloved cartoon character in the Midwest. Cigar labels like this show you what antique advertising is all about, with graphics that lithography and embossing provided that modern printing just can't reproduce — a genuinely lost art. Most of the artists who made labels like this were talented but desperate for work, paid very little, and got no credit for it. The majority of them will remain unknown forever, but we can keep their art alive.

New Old Stock, gold bright, embossing crisp, heavy paper stock that's kept it vibrant a century on. My pictures seriously don't do it justice. Good for Indiana and Brown County regional history collectors, Kin Hubbard and American humor enthusiasts, political Americana collectors chasing the Marshall/five-cent-cigar connection, and cigar and tobacco advertising collectors generally.