1995 Maxi-postcard depicting FC in highly humorous fashion. Monique Touvay, "Les Quatre Zéphires." Cancelled at Chateau-Thierry at noon on June 24, 1995. $4 from Topical Paradise, Ltd., August, '14.
The delight the French took in their set of 1995 La Fontaine stamps seems unlimited. I thought I had collected all the forms this issue took, but here is something new and delightful. The fox here holds out a hand to catch the round cheese as it falls. The last image has the fox sitting in his striped pants with both hands upraised in a gesture of frustration. This single card also raises the question of whether it is part of a series….
1908? Human peacock. $6 from Frank Sternad at the Sacramento Paper Fair, Dec., '96.
This card is from a series of which I saw some of the other members. It has "22" on it. Along with the multi-colored image of a woman who wears an outlandish skirt made of peacock feathers, there are eight lines of verse. The last four: "She closely resembles the Peacock/In feathers and hollow cone,/Except that her plummage is borrowed,/While his, I must say, is his own." (Did "plumage" have a double-m back then?) What we thus have is at least a lovely allusion to BF. The back has an address and a two-cent stamp. It was postmarked in 1908.
1920? Colored postcard advertising L'Huile de Table des Chartreux through a parody of GA. €15 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, June, '23.
This card challenged this cataloguer because it is both a postcard and an advertisement, a clever advertisement at that! I came down for postcard. The ant asks, as always, what the grasshopper was doing all summer. The answer? "I was eating all sorts of things with L'Huile de Table des Chartreux." The ant's response here: "You were eating? Fine. Now fast." She is hanging onto her bottle of the oil! The artistry is well done, and the color lovely. It looks to me as though there may have been a series of Chartreux advertisements presenting a "fable de la Fontaine accommodée à L'Huile de Table des Chartreux." I would love to find more of them!
1920? Postcard presenting FS. "Fable de la Fontaine accommodée a l'Huile de Table des Chartreux." Artist Raoul Vion. €10 at Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05.
This very colorful card seems to be roughly in the style of Benjamin Rabier. The colors help to draw attention to the lovely gold of the bottled oil. The advertisement substitutes bottles for the tall vases of the fable. In a small victory for modern technology, I was able to go out and find a Raoul Vion poster on the web. The date of the poster exactly matched the date I had guessed for this postcard! The back, fully filled out in a difficult hand, adds "Inutile de vous dire qu'il n'est pas de bonne cuisine sans Huile de Table des Chartreux."
1920? Postcard presenting FS. "Fable de la Fontaine accommodée a l'Huile de Table des Chartreux." Artist Raoul Vion. €10 at Paris Post Card Exhibition, Jan., '05.
This very colorful card seems to be roughly in the style of Benjamin Rabier. The colors help to draw attention to the lovely gold of the bottled oil. The advertisement substitutes bottles for the tall vases of the fable. In a small victory for modern technology, I was able to go out and find a Raoul Vion poster on the web. The date of the poster exactly matched the date I had guessed for this postcard! The back, fully filled out in a difficult hand, adds "Inutile de vous dire qu'il n'est pas de bonne cuisine sans Huile de Table des Chartreux."
