1924 Colored humorous postcard advertising Sel through OF. Jean C. Jacquez (?). Besançon: C. Lardier. $8 from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '18.
Here the bull responds, apparently as the frog tries to blow herself up larger, "It's no use! You don't eat SEL." It appears that this advertisement card, signed by the artist, is pre-stamped. That artist's name is difficult to decipher. I could not find that artist on the web. "Sel" alone is salt. I have wondered if this is not rather a product name, but that product would have been known a hundred years ago, and I cannot find reference to it on the web.
A handleless bowl 6" across featuring OF. On the opposite side there is a panel with the fable's title and moral in cursive. Around these two elements are a raised unpainted floral pattern.
This is the kind of bowl from which I love to drink café-au-lait when I am in Paris. The image seems to me Rabier-like. The ox looks back with a wary eye on the enlarged but not yet burst frog.
1950? Six large (just over 6.25"x 8.5") cards on flexible paper from the Laboratoires Gastro-Entérologiques Odinot. Fables de La Fontaine interprétées par Jean Droit. The six are numbered I-VI. Imp. Gutenberg: Garches 512. 21, Rue Violet, Paris. Purchased as a set from Annick Tilly at the Clignancourt flea market, August, '99.
Odinot makes Gastrosodine, Sel Digestif Bé-Me-Cé, Pluribiase, and Néo Cal-Ci-Line. Except for information like this and Gutenberg's identification, the back of each page is empty. The illustration on the front is a pen-and-ink drawing including always a pretty girl. I supposed this is a sophisticated version of the "French post card." The identifying features for the girl seem to be a swishing skirt and a low-cut blouse. She is the lamb stalked by the wolf, the reed that can bend. She, with a tear on her cheek, keeps his hat away from the fellow pigeon who wants to wander. She is apparently why the shepherd does not go off on a ship. She drops grapes down to the fox below, who has lost his shoe trying to climb the tree after her. In the most surprising turn for me, the old man planting the tree is assisted by the prettiest water-can-holding-assistant that one could imagine. Good fun for people who know the fables so well that they can enjoy parodies of them.
1900? 1 French card, OR, advertising Chocolat Besnier of Le Mans. €5 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23.
The card is similar in format to those distributed by Liebig about 1900, but it does not seem to replicate any of them. The boy escapes better, like the reed, than the grown man on horseback, who will perish like the oak. I find it unusual that one firm had three quite different fable card sets within a short range of time.
1900? Faience plate 8" in diameter showing two scenes depicting OR. Numbered "1." A mark on the back seems to combine the letters "M" and "C" and says "déposé Fables Terre de Fer." $17.50 from thegreenloft through Ebay, June, '22.
This plate features, in its mostly hidden background, the fable itself. One can see broken branches and leafy reeds. The plate's prominent framed picture features and soldier with rifle and a worker with spade. Which will survive? A non-colored second framed scene has two young men, the armed one of which has fallen. In the background of this scene is a fallen tree, and in the foreground some bending reeds.
