1940? TMCM Chocolate trade card "Chocolats Félix Potin." €9 from s.o.l.* on Ebay, Sept., '20.
This card seems so similar to many series we have found, yet I cannot connect it to any. The illustrated scene is quite original, since the town mouse appears with his wife or girlfriend, in lovely period costume. The town mouse seems surprised to find his cousin smoking a cigar in his field
1960? Chocolaterie Clovis Cards Album. Complete album of 30 sets of 6 slips each. Pepinster, Belgium: S.P.R.L. €200 from Albert van den Bosch, Antwerp, Dec., '22.
I believe that I had not seen Clovis slips before. This is a very impressive album. Each pair of pages features six slips pasted on the left with La Fontaine's French, with the right-hand page offering the text in Flemish together with a line drawing to color. The six slips are arranged differently on various of the 30 selections here. Albert had to find two missing cards for me. This is another treasure!
1920? Three small – about 2½” x 1½” – cards advertising Chocolaterie Ackermans in Liège, Belgium. Card designs taken from the Gallaher 100 series of cigarette cards. $10 for the three cards from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne-Ricouart, France, Sept., ’20. And from Bertrand at the same time one card for $3 from Chocolaterie-Confiserie Alpha-Imega "Venus" in Paris. Menin.
Fables are told in prose on the verso. The verso mentions an album and the 100 card total of cards in the series. These three cards are, respectively, #5, #86, and #97 in the Gallaher series.
1950? Les Fables de La Fontaine: Collection des Vignettes du Chocolat-Menier, Vignettes Nos 91 a 222. Hardbound. Paris/Noisiel, France: Chocolat-Menier. €17.50 from Librairie de l'Avénue, St. Ouen, Paris, August, '14.
The good luck of finding a complete two-volume set of these albums has led me to include this set among the books of the collection, while another complete set remains among the objects. Here 132 numbered cards are pasted in around La Fontaine's text. The cartoons remain delightfully Disneyesque. I enjoy the fat weasel who cannot get back out through the hole through which she entered (#108-12). In this book, the number of cards per fable and their sizes vary from presentation to presentation. The images of the beetle hammering eggs and throwing eggs out of the nest (#180) are wonderful! The pages here have subtle images of the appropriate fable done in light brown ink behind the black ink of the text. The front cover of the work features a bear watching TT and a coach and fly. A fox, rabbit, and tree are fellow spectators. The back cover has many animals either carrying Menier chcolate products or admiring a young woman painting a bilboard for Menier chocolates. On the last page, one reads how to get cards from the Menier Company. One gets a desired card by sending in three others! With this system, Menier could have gone on forever sending people the cards they needed! A laid-in paper announces "Conditions d'Échanges" and mentions a special Paris office for Chocolat-Menier vignettes. This album is in fair condition. One can also find this album listed as a book under "1950?", as well as individual Menier slips identical with individual slips in this album.
1950? Les Fables de La Fontaine: Collection des Vignettes du Chocolat-Menier, Vignettes Nos 1 a 90. Hardbound. Paris/Noisiel, France: Chocolat-Menier. $8.26 from Carlinotte, Aude, France, through Ebay, July, '20.
Here ninety numbered cards are pasted in around La Fontaine's text. Each fable has six colored cartoon-cards, except for the centerpiece, "Les Animaux Malades de la Peste," which has twelve cards. The animals are dressed and playful. The exploding frog makes a "pouf" sound (#29). The fish rejected by the picky heron wear women's hats (#68)! The inside of the back cover gives a history of chocolate. Of course, in this history Jean-Antoine Brutus Menier stands out. This album's cover gathers many fable characters in a park setting, with pond and bridge. The album is also listed with books under "1950" and we also have blotters, advertisements for the card albums, and individual album cards.
1915? Five monochrome hidden picture fable cards advertising Chocolat Roval from Les Fils de J. Vernet, Dijon. "La Fontaine." $6 each from Bertrand Cocq, Calonne Ricouart, France, Sept., '20. Printed by L. & A. Nisse, in Croix (Nord), Sept., '20.
Like the colored series "Colored French 'La Fontaine' Fable Cards," each card has a fable title and "La Fontaine" at the top, a full-length image, and a question at the bottom. The series also seems to overlap with the bilingual Dutch series "Mono Poeders Monochrome Hidden Picture Cards." I still do not find these easy!
1920? Two trade cards advertising Chocolat Poulain. "La Lecture" and "Demoiselle." Children pictured -- not in a fable scene -- in the corner of a frame with flowers. Fable text on the verso. €7 each from Simon Rodrigues, June, '19.
These are unusual cards. Why make the image and text on diverse subjects? "The Girl Catches a Butterfly" on the front seems to have no connection with "The Serpent and the File" on the back! What do the two children reading have to do with GGE?
1910? Four trade cards advertising Chocolat Poulain. H. 217. Gold background. Children pictured in a painted scene from a La Fontaine fable. €20 in St. Ouen, June, '19. "Miser" for €5 from Simon Rodrigues through Ebay, June, '22.
The scenes look familiar, even though they occupy only about 60% of the front of the card. The rest is "Chocolat Poulain: Goutez & Comparez" along with the title and first 25 words or so of the fable, presented in prose. I continue to struggle with the taste that has a male child acting the role of the dying father entrusting his treasured land to his children, or a female child acting the "old woman" here – elsewhere she is a nurse or mother – threatening to give the child to the wolf. The fable of the "travelers" here is the story of seeming to see a ship from afar that turns out, on closer inspection, to be some floating sticks. The verso repeats the beginning lines from the front, complete with a moral.
1900? Fifteen scraps advertising Chocolat Payraud. Prose texts on the verso "d'Après J. de la Fontaine." $50 for the group from Luc deGrauwe, Ghent, Belgium, through eBay, Sept, '10.
What a lovely, fragile group of fable illustrations. The colors are still vivid, even though the pieces are often slightly torn or bent. The cut, uneven edges raise a question whether these scraps came in the form they now have or were perhaps cut or punched out by the user. My favorite among these lovely fifteen scraps is TB. A friend with moustache is just grasping the tree which he will climb, and his partner is flat on the ground as the bear approaches with arms extended. I have seen some scraps before, but I cannot recall seeing such a lovely collection. Searching on the web revealed no others available at this time. You may have to space down to see the images below.
1910? Trade card of Chocolat-Payraud: "Rien ne sert de courir, il faut partir à point." $6 from Bertrand Cocq, Nov., '20.
The verso mentions Cacao Payraud. This couple needed not running but a prompt start, as the beginning of TH in La Fontaine advises.
