Today we are off to New York, or are we? For despite the address on this card, at 30 Burling Slip, New York, the Oriental And Occidental Tea Company was actually of New Jersey. However if you look at the American meaning of "Slip", it is an artificial inlet or dock off of a river, where ships would come in and unload - and that points to the address being warehousing rather than a shop or head quarters.
Now curiously our card gives the address of No. 30, but you will also find a longer address - of No.s 31, 33, and 35,
Anyway most records suggest that the O&O Tea Company was founded in 1893, but there is a card in the Jefferson Burdick Collection that is dated before that, to 1889. I will try and track down a picture. And apparently the company is still going, almost a hundred and fifty years on
This card does indeed illustrate the Occidental - with the small children in Western dress - and the Oriental - with the Japanese lady in her Oriental kimono. Some call her a geisha, but I am not sure that if she were she would have been involved with Western children.
If you look at the lampshade, it too advertises "O&O" with a little subliminal reminder of the trademark.
It seems that the company were quite prolific issuers of trade cards, and they also issued very Western sentimental scenes, often in monotone. However this card we feature seems to be the one which turns up most frequently perhaps because it is a very attractive card, in colour, and appeals to many collecting themes - and this means it would have been more likely to have been kept to use as a bookmark etc. And that, more than any other thing, is the key to survival.