The representation of the New Guinea tree house in the historical popular medium of the trade card

Abstract

This article focuses on the depiction of the iconographically significant subject of the Melanesian tree house in the popular medium of the trade or collectors card. Since the middle of the nineteenth century, the new and innovative medium of the trade card had gained great importance in Europe and the United States as a colourful form of advertising through the use of the new printing technique of chromolithography. The resulting striking designs were not only used to advertise consumer products but also to convey information on overseas countries to an increasingly interested domestic population. In particular, countries engaged in overseas colonialism used the medium to provide information about exotic countries and the civilizing goals of the colonial powers. Using the example of the unique and spectacular tree houses that existed in Oceania, predominantly in New Guinea, this article explores the variations of this motif on trade and collectors cards. The conclusion is that these cards, while serving exoticism, contain only limited ethnologically useful information. Nevertheless, the trade cards are valuable testimonies to the European-overseas relationship, in which clichés such as the romantic idea of the ‘South Seas’ found their expression. Ultimately, the trade cards say more about the colonizing European countries and their prejudiced perception of Oceanic cultures than about the peoples and cultures of the Pacific islands depicted.