3,800 Early Advertising Cuts

Book excerpt: Here is a nearly inexhaustible supply of copyright-free graphics filled with late 19th- and early 20th-century charm, ideal for a wide range of arts and crafts projects. Reproduced from the catalog of a famous French type foundry, it is a rich and authoritative source of advertising art of the period—filled with many delightful and arresting images not available elsewhere. An enormous array of objects, activities, and interests are depicted in finely detailed illustrations that lend themselves especially well to reproduction. Motifs include food and drink, domestic furnishings, vehicles, machines, tools and hardware, medical utensils, pharmaceuticals, farm animals and birds, as well as trades, sports, and music. Also included are fencers, golfers, insects, billiard tables, wrought-iron gates, architectural decorations, cows being milked, hunting dogs in the field, crowns and coronets, extravagantly carved breakfronts, elegant presentations of food, and much, much more. In addition, a large section is devoted to ornate banners, mortised cuts, and other line art specifically intended for typographical use. While the cuts in this collection range in style from genre realism to Art Nouveau, the images—beautifully realized in scrupulous and revealing detail—have a timeless appeal ideal for a wide variety of graphic uses.