L'art et les biscuits and 50 similar items

Birkitts Books presents ... L'art et les biscuits Author: George Hescher Publisher: Chene Release Date: 1978-01-01 Seller Category: Art Qty Available: 1 Condition: Used: Very Good Sku: 240831008 Notes: Minor shelf wear, binding tight, pages clean and unmarked.76 pages, text in English, French and German. The series of pictures we found turned out to be more of a tribute to one man than to the notoriety of a company From 1887 onwards, M. Louis Lefevre-Utile, in partnership with his brother-in-law Ernest Lefievre, substantially increased the activities of the Nantes biscuit factory, in a field that had hitherto been monopolized by the British. A keen business-man, he had both a liking and a feeling for advertising, in which he showed astounding inventive-ness until World War I. All the existing means of promoting sales at the time, not yet called media, were used or discovered by him Street and indoor posters, calendars, gift-boxes, « works of art », books, albums, decorated chinaware and wall advertising, nothing of possible use was overlooked. The posters of all sizes, mainly produced by Imprimerie Champenois, Paris, were technically superb color-lithographs that had not yet been ousted by offset printing. The artists employed were often famous, or on the point of becoming so. They included such names as Mucha, Luigi Loir, Benjamin Rabier and Cappiello. Others were obscure or anonymous artists who had been producing, until then, what the people of their time disparagingly called « chromos » , and that we now see in a different light, recognizing them as a part of « Kitsch » art. News, in its most varied forms, was systematically exploited the Paris Exhibition of 1900 of which the LU pavilion with its light-house on the banks of the River Seine was one of the highlights, Charcot's expeditions, the Czar's visit to Paris, the heroic feats of aviation pioneers, and so on. Celebrities of the day were prevailed upon to extol the merits of LU biscuits in a joyous mixture of high-society and the demi-monde, artists, actresses, bishops and explorers. These were golden days indeed when a gift or a box of biscuits was all it took to get pictures and auto-graphs, in prose, verse or to music, sometimes laborious but often skillfully turned-out praise At one time, we thought of gathering, if not publishing, all Lefevre-Utile's advertisements prior to World War I, both for present and future collectors. We had to give the idea up, however, because there were so many of them. Don't forget to check out other great deals in our Store!!