Dust Jackets

The back cover of this dust jacket has the fourteen verses, the last of them incorrectly labeled "VIX."  The color work on the wolf-shepherd seems to me excellent.  Of course I would love to see more in this colorful series -- and gather them into this collection!

This is the simplest and lightest of our dust-jackets.  While it has the text of La Fontaine's fable on its verso, there are no flaps and there is nothing printed on the inside of this simple sheet.  The image seems to be a classic of Imageries Réunies de Jarville-Nancy.

This simple dust-jacket may have the least identifying material of any in the collection!  I find nothing suggesting either printer or artist.  Help!

Characters from some of La Fontaine's most famous fables are arranged under his portrait.  The back of the dust-jacket quotes his promythium to TH: "Running solves nothing.  You need to depart on time."  The inside flap encourages babies to ask "Maman" to make sure that this is a "bébé BLÉDINE."

The verso presents the text along with comparative presentations of a shoe without and with Solitaire protection.  The fly on the front of the jacket is quite outsized!  I can find nothing on F. Sébille.

A rather primitive design signed by "CR" shows the cheese in mid-air falling to the waiting fox.  The back cover offers La Fontaine's verse text and tables of addition and subtraction.  The end-flaps offer chances to list the program for morning and evening each day of the week.

The back cover of this dust-jacket shows the portions of France.  Inside flaps explain that if you want to grow up to have strong teeth, you will eat "la Neige de Savoie".  The fox here seems particularly eager to get what the crow does not want to give up!

The back of the dust-jacket presents tables of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  The design on the cover is simple enough.  Neither critter is going to win this encounter!

This is about as simple as it gets in the genre of protège-cahiers.  The inside flaps contain a ruler and a set of basic measurement tables.  The back cover has tables of multiplication and division after the text of La Fontaine's FC.

Good color work!  Lorioux is always fun.  The figure of La Fontaine on the verso is puzzling.

The recto explains "Cleverer than Master Crow, the magpie who sings keeps his bonbons for wise children."  The verso shows the candy factory of "la pie qui chante" and explains the phased pleasures of eating this candy.  Is that tree on the recto growing the white candies?

The colorful mix of reds, yellows, and greens follows the pattern on Amora's blotter of the same era.  Here La Fontaine appears in a medallion in the upper center.  Around him are five fables.  Four are named and illustrated:  WL; "The Fox and the Goat"; LM; and "The Little Fish and the Angler."  Another, FC, is pictured on a glass container of Amora mustard.  As the back of the cover makes clear, there is a set of twelve glasses in the set, each with a different fable.  Now that would be a set to find!

This picture is unusually well done for a simple dust-jacket!  The rabbit returns home from school to find his home occupied.  Neither will do well in the end.  Byrrh offers "le grand vin au quinquina."  Are we selling wine to schoolchildren?  Is that an artist's signature of "LG" in the lower right?

This picture is unusual for emphasizing the defeat and chagrin of the dapper fox.  He goes away angry and outdone.

Here is a remarkable experience and a remarkable object.  The experience is that it had taken me some nine months to arrive at cataloguing a set of unusual early dust-jackets just a few days ago.  Then an object arrived that I had ordered on Ebay because it was unusual: a stapled booklet presenting 16 images consecutively in the first half on the right side of the booklet and then, in reverse order on the left-hand pages, the La Fontaine fable texts for those illustrations.  What happened here?  Did someone gather the dust jackets and assemble them?  Was that someone the publisher?    As with the individual dust jackets, so in the booklet: while the common top and left frame scene is signed by “Algis,” some of the inset illustrations are signed by “Algis” and others by “G. Dascher.”  Camille Charier seems to be the publisher.  The texts are printed not only in different colors but in differing typefaces.  What a strange find!  I show the booklet with edges exposed in hopes that viewers can see the four staples at the central crease of this booklet.  

The mosquito almost gets lost in this picture as he flies into the upper left corner of the cover of this "Cahier."  The viewer might be more drawn to the rabbit who ruins by while the lion takes a missing swing at the mosquito.  On the verso the lion is smiling, perhaps because he has just enjoyed some Menier chocolate.  The mosquito seems to be enjoying a chocolate himself as he rests on a mushroom.

This blotter nicely exaggerates the rotundity of the dog on the right and the famished skinniness of the wolf on the left.  They meet at a crossroads, where roads lead to Fleurette and Mousseville, respectively.  On the verso, the smiling dog advertises the "Fables de La Fontaine" cards one can get in Menier chocolate bars and other Menier products.   

Pulmoll is here using the same catch-phrase as on the dust-jackets from a different era.  The side flaps still present districts of France.  The cartoon on the back cover seems to say that Grandpa gets over the cough from smoking cigars by taking Pulmoll tablets.

The flaps on the inside of the dust-jacket offer tables of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.  Both fable illustrations are done with red and green coloring, and offer a rich background to their foreground focus.