Grandfather
A tall, elegant silhouette
Chestnut silver tresses
The tomato with rice soup
Golden Fiction cigarettes
Heartfelt warmth
My beloved grandmother
There she lays
On the kitchen floor
A broken wrist
Because she forgot
to water his azalea
Kurume Azalea -- Michael Vigliotti
Golden Fiction was a brand of high-quality cigarettes introduced by the Dutch company Ed. Laurens in 1946; in a decade it had 10% of the market share. Eduard Laurens of France established the company in Belgium in 1885 and founded his first factory in 1887 in Alexandria, Egypt. In 1888 he received the right from the Egyptian king Tewfick I to use the brand name "Khedive" and the king's portrait. After expansion of European operations since the 1890s, the Dutch branch was established. The firm produced numerous brands (including Aida, Bolero, Carlton, Corps Diplomatique, Filtra, Fregate, Jubilee, Kansas, Prince de Monaco, Sabine, Santos Dumont, Sonia, Stella, Tivoli) that are prized collctor's items, especially the advertising cards developed by Jan Lavies from 1937, coinciding with its introduction of two "American-type" cigartte brands, Buffalo and Holiday. In 1947 the popular Caballero brand was developed, which was resonsible for 2/3 of its production in the late 1970s. In 1972 the firm was taken over by the Rothmans Group of British tobacco firms, founded in 1890 by Louis Rothman, who launched his Pall Mall brand in 1900 and a series of premier brands such as Rothmans, Players, and Dunhill; Rothmans was acquired by British American Tobacco in 1999.
ReplyDeleteThanks Duane, I didn't know the history of Golden Fiction.
ReplyDeleteI remembered my grandmother smoked this brand.