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The cigar box drove the tramp art craft Tramp-art.com
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Today's interest in cigar smoking is a revival
of an earlier fad. Starting shortly after the Civil War and continuing
into the 1930's, the popularity of cigar smoking swept the industrialized
world. The cigar industry was "big business" and today, many
collectables remind us of the cigar's "hey day": tobacco cards,
cigar box labels & bands, cigar silk or flannel decorated textiles,
cigar cutters and cigar store Indians, etc.
Tramp art is made from the discards of the tobacco industry. The cigar box provided crafters with an excellent and inexpensive (often free) source of high quality small dimension. lumber.
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1876 L'ASSOMMOIR by Emile Zola
The following excerpt is an early mention of cigar box lumber used for craft projects. Zola was a noted advocate and founder of Naturalism in literature; the novelist, like a scientist, should observe and record dispassionately.
"Upstairs in the room, Poisson the husband, a man of thirty-five, with an ashy face and red moustache and imperial beard, was sitting working at a table by the window, making little boxes. His only tools were a penknife, a little saw as big as a nail file, and a glue pot. The wood that he used came from old cigar-boxes, thin slips of unpolished mahogany, which he cut and carved with extraordinary delicacy. All day long, from years end to years end, he went on making the same box, eight centimeters by six; only, he inlaid it, invented new kinds of lid, put in compartments. It was merely for his own amusement, a way of killing time until he should get his nomination as policeman. Out of his old trade as cabinet-maker the passion for little boxes had stuck to him. He did not sell his work; he gave it away to his acquaintances."
L'ASSOMMOIR by Emile Zola, Orion Publishing Group, London, 1995, p. 161-162
The government subsidized the tramp art craft
 99-008B stamp issued 1864 |
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 99-008A stamp issued 1868 |
taxes = trash = tramp artRevenue stamps were once wrapped around cigar boxes. This was Uncle Sam's way of monitoring cigar sales. The stamp was proof that tobacco taxes were paid & collected. Once the box was opened & the stamp broken, it was against the law to reuse the box for cigar sales. Cigar boxes became the raw material for a variety of crafts including tramp art. This stamp- dependent- tax scheme was in effect between 1862 and 1932. Over 1000 stamp types were issued. By identifying the stamp remnants that you may find on a piece of tramp art, you can date the cigar box wood.* |
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*recommended stamp collectors book; Springer's handbook of north American Cinderella Stamps, ©1986, Sherwood Springer
| How-to: Harvesting lumber from cigar boxes by
removing labels
All variety of handicrafts have uses for that fine quality and small dimensional lumber found in old cigar boxes. In the early 1900s there appeared a variety hobby magazines that included instructions and plans on how to make items by recycling cigar boxes. The following excerpt is from Child Life magazine December 1930, from the article "Doll House Furniture" by Neely Hall "After obtaining a supply of cigar boxes, remove the paper linings and labels. Place the boxes in a tub of hot water, weight them down, and allow them to soak until the paste has softened. Then peel off the paper. Place the covers flat against the bottoms, and bind with string, to prevent them from warping, and place the boxes near a radiator or stove. When the boxes are dry, knock them apart." A caution!! Old antique cigar boxes can be valuable and are collectable for their decorative cigar box labels. Before removing labels educate yourself. Today's crafters are encouraged to recycle only NEW cigar boxes. The following book is a wonderful reference for appreciating cigar box labels as art items. "The Art Of The Cigar Label" by Joe Davidson, Copyright 1989 The Wellfleet Press, Secaucus, NJ |
