1950? Menu: Restaurant Francais. 2442 North Clark Street, Chicago. "Fables de La Fontaine." 9" x 14". $4.99 through Ebay, May, '19.
When was a complete dinner $9.95?! The offerings look delectable. The front cover features a drawing of FC, and the back cover offers La Fontaine's text of the fable. I could find no information online about when this institution went out of business. There is a seven-digit phone number, and those seem to have started in the 50's, while area codes seem to have been added in the 60's.
1880? Repaired ABC plate 7½" in diameter. Various patterns encircle the alphabet displayed on the plate's rim. On its inner circle in capitals are "Æsop's Fables" above and "The Fox and the Grapes" below a pleasing design of a fox walking away from grapes hanging from a tree. Maker unknown. $24.99 from Cindy Schneider, Wellington, OH, through Ebay, Oct., '00.
Here is a much better exemplar than the plate I had found earlier. The colored design in the middle is very well preserved. Repairs have been made to reinstate a smaller piece from about 10 and 11 o'clock and a larger piece extending from 11 to 4 o'clock.
1920? "Le Renard, le Loup et le Cheval." 4 (?) Deposé. €4 at the Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '04.
Apparently a copy of an oil painting showing the horse kicking the wolf as the latter was about to read what was supposed to be on the horse's hoof. Spector translates the verses on the card's picture side this way: "The Wolf, all flattered by this address,/Drew near, but his vain foolishness/Cost him four teeth. The Horse, with no further debate,/Gave him a kick and off he ran. So there was Wolf prostrate,/In deplorable shape, a bloody mess." The verso is blank, the card unused.
1997 Christmas postcard from the Reineke Fuchs Museum, Linden, Germany, with photograph of an 1890's clock, made in Paris, adorned by a statue of La Fontaine with fox and crow. Message from Friedrich von Fuchs to Rev. Gregory Carlson, S.J.
French meets German meets American, just as fox met crow.
