A Box of Candee's. Sweets to the Sweet

New Haven, CT: L.Candee & Co., 1880. Very good. Die-cut trade card, n. d. (second half of the 19th century); 3 1/4 x 5 3/4; chromolithographed card stock, single sheet, die-cut and folded to resemble a closed candy box; light wear to edges and minor spotting; in very good condition.A beautiful advertisement, it employed a clever play-on-words, with the upper panel showing several ladies with parasols, the lower - a pile of boots with two naked cherubs rolling in it, and the text: "We all wear the Candee Rubbers...A box of Candee's."The L. Candee Company was incorporated in 1852 with four partners, with Leverett Candee (1795 – 1865) as President. He had been manufacturing elastic suspenders and rubber shoes solo since the early 1840s. They would obtain the first license to use Goodyear patent for making rubber shoes, obtained from Charles Goodyear himself. The company would grow to be the largest manufacturer of rubber footwear in the world.