1930? Twelve numbered cards from the 269 series of 12 portrait-formatted trade cards advertising Suchard products. La Fontaine fables. €33 each from collectomania, Oct., '22.
These cards follow the pattern found in the later cards of having each card advertise one of Suchard's particular products. In this case, the product itself is pictured as part of the front of the card. The verso of each is highly ornamental. At the top, five Suchard products are listed. Under "Suchard," a text-box features at least a portion of the fable. Around this text-box is a repeated design of various fable characters. "Série 269" is at the bottom right of each verso.
1980? Twelve numbered cards in strong portrait format (2⅜" x 4⅛") distributed among five "families" of Suchard: Chocolat, Velma, Milka, Cacao, and Noisettine. €25 from Albert Van den Bosch, Antwerp, Belgium, Feb., '12. BF from olivier9682 through Ebay for €6.50, July, '22.
Some of these cards still have the feel that the powder with which they came is still on them. Strong colors and simple forms mark these cards, which are quite different from the more traditional Suchard landscape cards. The identifying numbers between "1" and "12" can be hard to find but they are there in the corner of the image segment.
1910? Four numbered cards from a series of 12 landscape formatted trade cards advertising Suchard products. La Fontaine fables. €30 each from collectomania, Oct., '22.
The verso of each card shows a woman in kerchief with four children and a cat and the notation "Série 235." The front of each card follows a formula including a green or green-and-red rectangular border; a scene of children that overflows the borders of that rectangle; some Suchard product with its name; the title of the La Fontaine fable; and a few verses from the original fable. Some of the illustrations start to become a bit grotesque, particularly WC and "The Bear and the Gardener." We have now #4, 5, 11, and 12. Let's find the other eight!
1905? 12 numbered French cards of La Fontaine fables from Chocolat Suchard. 2 3/8" x slightly more than 4". $63 from Marie Foreman, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, through Ebay, Feb., '02. The last two cards for $10 from Albert Van den Bosch, Antwerp, Belgium, April, '13.
These small landscape-formatted cards offer beautiful colored pictures of human scenes exemplifying animal fables. The picture-side includes "Chocolat Suchard," a number up to 12, and a title. The verso, sometimes showing a glue-tear, comes in four different patterns. In each of the patterns, a title and excerpts from the fable occur beneath an elaborate monocolor floral or animal background, "Neuchatel, Suisse," and mention of London, Paris, and New York offices. The addresses are the same in each format. Each format also mentions "Exposition Universelle Paris 1900 Grand Prix." The colored illustration cleverly includes both the animal scene and some Suchard product into the human scene. Even a bridge and a road bear the Suchard name! Do not miss in "Les Deux Coqs" the dramatic confrontation of two men in the farmyard, while a young woman looks on. The joker in FC is about to lure the Suchard chocolate from the vain dandy who carries it. The scene in "Le Rat et l'Huitre" is complex. A boy stealing packages of Suchard chocolate is about to experience the jaws of an attacking dog, just as the rat probing an oyster is about to have the oyster snap shut on his or her head!
1955? Five different Italian postcards with verse text and colored picture on one side and room for a message and address on the other. 3 3/8" x 5 3/8". Though the card stock is cheap, the color work is very nice. It seems to involve about four colors per card. The visual works are signed by "stefanini" (?). Studio Stefan. A cura dell'Associazione Cardinal Ferrari. 10,000 Lire each at the Porta Portese flea market, August, '98. One extra of "La Cornacchia Superba." Click on any image to see it full-size.
2015? Storytellers' Favorite Fables: Folktales from around the World! Organic Kids Company. DVD. 62 minutes. Eight tales. $3.60 from Leonardo Hernandez, Hialeah Gardens, FL, through Ebay, July, '18.
Storytellers do lively presentations here with the help of a guitarist and a small audience of children. The fifth of the eight tales is "Bone Day," a lively retelling of DS with plenty of musical participation.
1995 Story Cards: Aesop's Fables. Compiled by Raymond C. Clark. With Illustrations by Hannah Bonner. Large-format pamphlet. First printing. Printed in USA. Brattleboro, Vermont: Pro Lingua Associates. $14.50 from Pro Lingua Associates, June, '97. Extra copy at the same price from the publisher at the same time.
Here are forty-eight fable cards, four to a page, to tear from the 8½" x 11" book. On the back of each card is the appropriate title and story. The color cartoon work is well done. The whole dead donkey is loaded onto the uncooperative horse (#3). "The Lion and the Fox" (#7) is done in terms of written invitation and written response. I am not sure I remember ever seeing "The Men and the Chameleon" (#38) before. "The Donkey's Brains" (#47) shows the hole in the donkey's head quite graphically! Human dress is ancient. I will also list this under "Fable Cards." I will also include with each copy a copy of the Pro Lingua catalogue for 1997, featuring WC on its cover.
1980? Chinese story‑blocks, including FG, "The Raven and the Swans," WC, "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing," "The Cat and the Fox," "The War Horse and the Ass."&nbs
This set of 5x4 blocks is similar to the two above, but this set always turns out to be rectangular. Several images are almost identical, but here the image is rectangular. The craftsmanship is again fine! Click on the image here to look at all six pictures.
1920? Postcard presenting La Fontaine's WC text beside a colored illustration. A. Storck & Co. Deposé. €6 from ABC de la C.P.A., Lyon, at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05.
The illustration here may be somewhat simple and disappointing, but the border around it is very clever. Its top is formed by two storks' heads (no pun with the publisher!) holding bones in their beaks. Follow down either side, and you will find the stork's legs. Are those perhaps bones lying on the contract at the lower right of the frame? The writer of this card put a message onto its picture side.
1920? Postcard presenting La Fontaine's "Le Laboureur et Ses Enfants" text beside a colored illustration. Confiserie Roussier, Sarret & Cie., Grenoble. A. Storck & Co. Deposé. €9 from Dominique Chapelon, Yronde ete Buron, at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05.
The card is arranged in this case to allow for an advertising strip at its top. Again, it pays to watch the frame of the rather standard picture of the man and his children at his bedside. Arranged around the picture we find wheat, grapes, vines, and finally a bag of coins. Roussier and Sarret add another design on the blue verso. A female figure of abundance pours out candy for eager children to enjoy. This design is so nice that I include it here.
1920? Postcard presenting La Fontaine's FS text beside a colored illustration. A. Storck & Co. Deposé. €6 from ABC de la C.P.A., Lyon, at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05.
The illustration here is unusual in that it has the stork standing on top of the table holding the meal. The elongation of the image helps to reinforce the point of the fable. The fox's legs seem to have become quite human in their pose. The frame of the image includes heads of both principal figures. This card is stamped "Offert par le Grand Bazar de l'Hotel de Ville, Lyon-Terreaux." I guess you could use the card to write home about the glories of this hotel.
1920? Postcard presenting La Fontaine's FC text beside a colored illustration. A. Storck & Co. Deposé. 50 Francs from Annick Tilly, Clignancourt, July, '01.
This card is like another illustrated here, the parody of FC that I have guessed was published around 1932, in that it uses all of one side for an address and takes up almost all of the other side for its illustration and image. The illustration in this case dresses the fox as a gentleman and gives him eyeglasses on a cord. The figure of the crow looms as large as the figure of the fox. There is no writing at all on this card.
1908 1 numbered German card of Stollwerck's "Helden-Album," No. 10. Almost 2" x 3¾". "Fischer-Coerlin." Gruppe 440, No. I. "Stollwerck's Deutsche Alpenmilch-Schokolade."
On the verso of this pleasing full-color portrait-format portrait of La Fontaine is a biography of the poet. In the picture itself one can make out a fox and crow, as La Fontaine himself holds a book. Stollwerck has a celebrated history from 1839 to 2011. It was famous among other things for candy vending machines. Stollwerck's "Helden-Album," published in 1908, included some 288 cards.
1880 1 card picturing WC. No advertising printed on either side. Gibson Company, Southern Ohio. 3" x 4½". $10 from The Cartophilians, March, '98.
The illustration is Harrison Weir's (unacknowledged). I suspect that the card's date is date of a general printing permit rather than this card; if it is for this card, it would be some of Weir's earliest work, I believe. The text is not taken from the thirty I have catalogued to date.
1965? Set of 20 embroidery stitching cards plus four extras. Complete set. Fables de La Fontaine. Numbered 1-20. DMC $28.68 from Boulot Dodo, Avignon, France, through Etsy, Jan., '19. Thirteen duplicates for $94 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
Now here is something unusual, even unique. I did not know that there were embroidery stitching cards. DMC is apparently a thread manufacturer. These are advertisements for their thread, as the cards promise "solid colors, brilliant, durable." I wonder what one would then do with the 24 fable panels embroidered with the help of these cards? And would the sewing happen on the very card itself? I learned on the web that "DMC has been developing award-winning fine threads and specialist yarns for makers since 1746, when artist Jean-Henri Dollfus joined forces with a pair of equally visionary entrepreneurs. Today DMC produces their natural yarns in Italy and France, collaborating with some of Europe’s most prestigious fashion houses, venerable art galleries, up-and-coming designers and needlecraft bloggers."
1910? Sterling bowl labelled "Sterling E S C." 6½" in diameter. With six fable titles and images around its inner rim. $200 from maxbernat through Ebay, March, '22.
The six segments are particularly well done. Even the transition sections, each in three parts, follow a theme but vary it in each case. Lovely! The choice of fables to offer departs from the usual here in several cases.
1910? Seven stereoscopic photographic postcards of La Fontaine fables. "Scènes de Genre." Paris: L'Imprimerie Nouvelle Photographique. $60 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18. Another from Bertrand for $8, Sept., '20.
What a fascinating find! One finds that interpretations offered elsewhere are confirmed here, for example, that people interpret WL often in terms of romantic relationships between the sexes, and that "Two Doves" is regularly seen the same way. Some of the fun with these cards is that the characters and even their dress seem to repeat from story to story. Apparently the photographer had a small stable of actors and costumes to work with! It is surprising that GA appears twice, in apparently different conceptions of where the encounter takes place. The cicada has a shawl in one depiction that she does not have in the other. And is it supposed to be winter? My favorite among the cards is MSA: the characters have good poses revealing their attitudes.
1930 Complete set of twelve silver plated kniferests (portes couteaux) by Stephane Prudhomme illustrating favorite fables. Apparently in the original box. $154.71 from brocs_en_stock on Ebay, Jan., '18.
Each knife rest is a panel 3¼" wide and 1" high supported by triangles on the edges, whose other two sides are ¾" and 11/16". A sale on the internet was helpful for identifying this set as coming from Prudhomme. The small square towards the left edge in the top frame presents Prudhomme's mark, S and P around a caduceus. It took a high-resolution scan to produce the picture below of that mark. The twelve fables presented include expected standards like TMCM, CJ, GA, FS, WL, 2P, "The Hares and the Frogs," and "The Heron." There is also Florian's "The Monkey and the Magic Lantern. Three others are harder, at least for me, to identify. Is one "The Fox and the Cat"? What is the small object in their image? In another, two fowl seem to be arguing over a snail. In a final knife-rest there are three birds: might they be the mother lark and her young?
1905? Five photographic postcards presenting "Revanche de la Cigale," apparently a sequel to "La Cigale et la Fourmi," presumably after La Fontaine. VBC Série No. 3046. Stebbing Photographic Studios. All were sent to Mademoiselle Marie Louise Bruyère (chez ses Parents), Grande rue à St Genis, Laval, Rhône. At least one card is clearly dated 1907. $9.99 from Joachim Montbord, La Sauve, France, through eBay, March, '04.
Series #3046 is five cards on the cicada's revenge on the niggardly ant. The story follows up on Series #3045, "La Cigale et la Fourmi." The cicada character is the same in all cards of both sets. Here the rejected cicada finds a fairy godmother who trains her musically. The cicada, now rich, returns to the ant, who has been thrown out of her home and needs to sell everything. The ant is the same actress as in the other set, and the venue is the same, except for the "For Sale" sign here. The gracious cicada takes no revenge but rather opens her purse for the unfortunate ant. There is extensive pink and green coloring of these black-and-white pictures. I wonder how that was done.
1905 Complete set of 5 colored photographic postcards "Lex Tourtereaux" after La Fontaine's fable "Two Doves." Stebbing, Paris. $60 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
This portrayal of La Fontaine's fable follows the traditional interpretation but not, I would say, the original story. La Fontaine's fable is of two deeply befriended birds, one of whom feels the need to travel. That bird does so, but undergoes frightening experiences and a good deal of suffering before returning to the welcoming bird-friend. This portrayal links two human lovers with two nearby birds but contents itself with simple lines matching the photographs. "Two doves love each other with a tender love." "They cannot live one without the other." "They were always cooing." "They embraced each other without stopping." "They loved each other….they were happy."
1905? Complete set of five photographic postcards presenting "La Cigale et la Fourmi," VBC Series Number 3045. Stebbing Photographic Studios. Five cards and two extras for #35 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18. Extra of the first card in the series for $3 from Elsa Pinto, Paco de Arcos, Portugal, June, '13. Extra of #5 for $1.50 from Joachim Montbord, La Sauve, France, through eBay, March, '04.
The story here follows La Fontaine but stresses the emotional experience of the cicada. It is hard to be sure of the order of the cards. I presume the sequence runs like this: (1) The lovely cicada sings before the ant requesting food. (2) With trembling hand, she then asks out of her poverty for charity and compassion. (3) But asking this neighbor is useless. (4) "You have sung well, but you have not amassed things as I have. You will have to dance." (5) Poor cicada, abandoned! How sad! There is extensive pink coloring of these black-and-white pictures. I wonder how that was done. Stebbing follows up with a sequel, "Revanche de la Cigale," VBC Series #3046, using the same characters, actors, and setting.
