Ad Strips : Billy Poster

Here's a sampling of ads from a campaign for Gravely's Chewing Plug Tobacco. Gravely's doesn't seem to have been a particularly big name in the tobacco biz, so it's quite impressive that they coughed up the dough to get the services of the great Edward Kemble. Kemble seems to have dashed off the art for these ads pretty quickly, either that or he was intentionally trying to create a stiff, old-fashioned look to the drawings. Kemble's drawings were usually highly expressive so these cartoons are anything but typical of his delightful style.

These samples were submitted by Cole Johnson, for which I offer a tuneful ringing of the spittoon. Unfortunately the samples Cole submitted got filed away somewhere and I can't find them to give the dating. I'm pretty sure these were from 1918 or 1919.