Canning novelty. Early methods of manufacture employed poisonous lead solder for sealing the cans. Studies in the 1980s attributed the lead from the cans as a factor in the disastrous outcome of the 1845 Franklin expedition to chart and navigate the Northwest Passage. Later studies found this to be false. Increasing mechanization of the canning process, coupled with a huge increase in urban populations across Europe, resulted in a rising demand for canned food. A number of inventions and improvements followed, and by the 1860s smaller machine-made steel cans were possible, and the time to cook food in sealed cans had
Campbell's Soup Cans they were freshly produced cans without flaws. Occasionally, he chose to depict cans with torn labels, peeling labels, crushed bodies, or opened lids (images right). Sometimes he added related items like a bowl of soup or a can opener (in the image on the right below). Sometimes he produced images of related items without any soup cans such as the box sculpture "Campbell's Tomato Juice Box" (above left), which are not strictly a part of the series although a part of the theme. Many of these works were now being produced at the already acclaimed studio, "The Factory." Irving Blum