The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women
[fashion retail ephemera, trade catalogue]

The Famous Queen Quality Shoe for Women


Boston: Thomas G. Plant Co., 1902.

Embossed printed wraps, 16mo; 31pp, (iii). Printed by Sackett & Wilhelms with 2 chromolithographs: Queen Elizabeth on the first- and Marie Antoinette on the last page. "1902" in faint, tiny print at the upper edge of the first chromo. Centerfold loose from the corroded staples, faint tidemark to the bottom edge; mild soil, a Very Good copy overall with over 20 models of shoes illustrated with floating photographs to great effect.

Invented by French-Canadian immigrant Thomas Plant, the "Queen Quality" shoe was produced in Boston and marketed to American women as "the perfection of modern footwear" created to their needs and worthy of a Queen. Plant included brief biographies and color lithograph portraits of "the world's most famous queens" in the catalog as a promotional tactic, announcing "The series will have great historical value... the pictures should be retained carefully by those receiving them, as we propose to issue each of our subsequent catalogues the portraits of other royal women, as full of interest and as valuable as works of art as those presented herewith."