Malta Flag with Red Maltese Heraldic Cross Tobacco Cigarette Silks circa 1910 +1 for Sale

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Malta Flag with Red Maltese Heraldic Cross Tobacco Cigarette Silks circa 1910 +1 For Sale

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Malta Flag with Red Maltese Heraldic Cross Tobacco Cigarette Silks circa 1910 +1:
$8.25

1 Flag + 1 Free …. See images

Malta is an archipelago in the central Mediterranean between Sicily and the North African coast. It's a nation known for historic sites related to a succession of rulers including the Romans, Moors, Knights of Saint John, French and British. It has numerous fortresses, megalithic temples and the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum, a subterranean complex of halls and burial chambers dating to circa 4000 B.C.

The Escutcheon features the white cross couped The Maltese cross is a cross symbol, consisting of four "V" or arrowhead shaped concave quadrilaterals converging at a central vertex at right angles, two tips pointing outward symmetrically.

It is a heraldic cross variant which developed from earlier forms of eight-pointed crosses in the 16th century. Although chiefly associated with the Knights Hospitaller (Order of St. John, now the Sovereign Military Order of Malta), and by extension with the island of Malta, it has come to be used by a wide array of entities since the early modern period, notably the Order of Saint Stephen, the city of Amalfi, the Polish Order of the White Eagle (1709), the Prussian order Pour le Mérite (1740), and the Bavarian Military Merit Order (1866).

Unicode defines a character named "Maltese cross" in the Dingbats range at code point U+2720 (✠); however most computer fonts render the code point as a cross pattée.

Tobacco Silk Flag of the World Cigarettes Circa 1910

Sovereign cigarettes factory no 30 2nd dist NY

Measure appx. 2” x 3”

The practice of inserting advertising in tobacco products and packaging began about 1870 and was common throughout the late 19th Century and the first decades of the 20th Century. The inserts or “premiums” were varied, some more functional than others, but altogether interesting, and therefore they became collectible items to thousands of men, women and children. Tin tobacco tags, cigarette cards, cigar ribbons, cigarette silks, and tobacco flannels, are a small portion of the collectibles classified as Tobacciana.

It was between 1905 and 1910 that tobacco companies here in America, began inserting textile items into their cigarette and tobacco products. The fad for these textiles was between 1910 and 1916. At the beginning of WWI the practice of inserting textiles into cigarette or other tobacco packaging here in the United States was more or less abandoned. These items are not as well-known nor collected as other tobacco related items like cigar boxes or tins, cigarette cases and lighters.

One of the most popular of the tobacco inserts or premiums was the tobacco or cigarette “silk”. While they are called silks, they were actually made from a variety of fabrics such as silk or silk satin, a cloth combination of silk and cotton, a cotton sateen or even a plain woven cotton. The silks were often beautifully poly-chrome printed with varied subjects, and were usually printed with the tobacco company name.

Silks came printed in dozens of themes and in series formats. Very often the designs were the same types of designs as those seen on the cigarette cards. Themes included floral designs of every type, flags of all the different nations of the world, American Indian motifs including the great Indian Chiefs, popular actresses and actors, bathing beauties, Kings and Queens of the countries of Europe, animals of all types, and military themes with soldiers and medals from many countries, just to name a few. The silks came in different sizes and could be sewn together to make quilts or larger pictures. Some look like little rugs.