VINTAGE CHROMOLITHOGRAPHIC ADVERTISING CARDS

The 9 INDIA sets among the lot of 12 sets constitute the complete collection of India-related sets issued by the Liebig Extract of Meat Co. The company was named after its founder Baron Justus von Liebig, a German chemist, who started to manufacture meat extracts and beef stock cubes [also using the brand name Oxo], sometime in the 1850s and as a promotional and publicity effort began to issue thematic cards in sets of 6 [and occasionally of 12] in 1870. In all, about 2,000 sets were issued covering countries, people, cultures, birds, animals, costumes, plants and were issued in German, French, Italian, Spanish and Dutch [but not in English]. During a century of their publication around 2,000 sets are stated to have been issued. Liebig was taken over by Brooke Bond in the 1970s and the publication of the cards was stopped soon after. The finestquality cards, however, were issued only until about 1920s, to which all the sets belong. The early sets were printed with the chromolithographic technique, sometimes using up to 13 stones to register different colours and were even tinted in gold [like the cards in the 12 - card set on the history of India]. Some of the images in the India sets have been copied from Louis Rousselet's 'India and its Native Princes', a massive, heavilyillustrated travelogue originally published in French in 1875. BURMA and AFGHANISTAN had only one set each issued for them.