An Antique Transfer Printed Balkan Sobranie Cigarette Box

An Antique Balkan Sobranie Table Cigarette Box
Transfer Printed Creamware Pottery
English, Probably Staffordshire
Late 19th-Early 20th Century
Circa 1880-1910

Measures:- 5.5 cm high x 15 cm wide x 11 cm deep

A Balkan Sobranie table cigarette presentation box, which would originally have contained 100 cigarettes. This business was established in London in 1879 by Albert Weinberg (b.1849), a merchant from Odessa, with the aim of supplying premium tobacco products. The brand prided itself in using only the topmost leaves of the Yenidje tobacco plant, synonymous with the town of Yenidje in Thrace (modern-day Genisea in Greece (towards the top of the Balkan Peninsula)) a leading producer of high-quality Oriental tobacco.

The illustration on the lid shows two Balkan women, who are smoking whilst watching wagon loads of cigarettes pass by, with a mountain range in the distance. The front and back panels of the box show a Balkan scene with a man and a woman, and the sides have “100” printed over a sprig of tobacco plant.

Good condition. Some wear/chips to the extremities. A discoloured hair-crack to the box currently stabilised with tape.