Genuine Bull Durham

Genuine Bull Durham

c. 1910
14.00x
8.20cm

One of America's most recognized international brands around the turn of the century, this was one of 33 postcards advertising the tobacco firm's product. North Carolina, where the firm was headquartered, was and remains a center of American tobacco growing. Bull Durham tobacco was sold from the 1850s through 1988, and was used as a name for a baseball team and inspired the 1988 hit sports movie Bull Durham with Kevin Costner and Susan Sarandon.

The firm apparently pioneered the use of high-end advertising to successfully drive demand, and is said to have proven that this could be a solid marketing strategy. Certainly this postcard, a high-quality lithograph when that had become a far more expensive printing technology to use than others, is an example of that strategy – even as the image and poem reflect every possible colonial trope.

Verso "Bull" Durham's Trip Around the World Over 30 Subjects Representing Different Countries.