Card of the Day - 2022-02-17

This card shows Cupid, the god who most of us associate second with Valentines Day, after Venus; actually he was her son, the father being Mars, the God of War. This may be where the saying that there is a very thin line between love and hate came from, in a round about way! In Latin his name is Amor, and in Greek it is Eros, like the statue in Piccadilly Circus in London. You may be wondering why that statue does not show a little child like this card - well the answer is that he has several forms, and in one he is a slim young man which was perhaps thought more artistic for the purposes of the statue. 

Alexander Boguslavsky Ltd was founded about 1896, but this set was issued long after they were a firm in name only, for they became merely a branch of Carreras in 1913.

Carreras seems to have mainly used it for issuing four sets between 1925 and 1927, under the brand of “Turf Cigarettes” like this set of ours. Or perhaps ours was the first, as the back is very similar. Those four sets were “Famous Escapes”, “Horses and Hounds”, “Races – Historic and Modern” and “Regalia Series”, all of which were available in three sizes, standard, large, and cabinet size.

The only thing they have in common are that they are very well glazed to the fronts. Whether this was a trial of a process that Carreras hoped to introduce, but something convinced them not to is unknown, however it cannot have been too much of an undercover trial for all of those four sets of cards have the addition of the wording “Made by a Branch of Carreras”.

Sadly the separate reference book to Carreras and Boguslavsky never materialised, so we will never know.