Nestor Moehr, Perfumerie de Monte Carlo

 

Nestor Moehr was a creator of perfumes. The perfumes Lotus Bleu and Capucine were only two of his creations.  Looking online for information I found an empty Lotus Bleu perfume bottle and a boxed bottle of unopened perfume from the 1930s. I wonder what it would smell like today.

I also found a very interesting blog post on Nestor Moehr , Perfumerie de Monte Carlo.

Poulbot's children

Three postcards illustrated by Francisque Poulbot for the “Ligue National contre le Taudis” (League against squalor) which came into being in 1927.

Here you see children discussing the size of fleas, a pig in the larder, and two children talking about the dreadful smell in an apartment being two dead rats under the mattress. They are beautiful but heart breaking postcards.

Later ‘Poulbot’ became the name for the poor children of Montmartre; descendants of the original children that inspired his paintings.

Catskill Mountains

This card was posted to France in 1935. A lovely sunset in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. Apparently it was a popular destination for New Yorkers in the mid twentieth century and is popular with painters writers and musicians even today. The mountains are no stranger to the film industry featuring in Woodstock, Tootsie, Dirty Dancing, Casper Meets Wendy,  to name a few.
Information taken from Wikipedia

To the roots of the wondrous

This postcard was published in 2001 to publicise an exhibition of the work of Aristide Caillaud who died in 1990 at the age of 88. He started to draw as a prisoner of war in a camp near Dresden in the early 1940s.

The painting here: “Aux raciness du merveilleux” which I translate as, “To the roots of the wondrous” is typical of his work. If you search for his name using Google images you’ll find a wealth of incredibly colourful images.

Vichy

Two postcards from Vichy. Vichy is a spa town and the baths have been a popular destination since the 17th century. These two could almost be landscape paintings.

Deux Châteaux

I recently put these two postcards into our store. I like slightly different views, especially with people included:

Château de la Tour is a Hotel nowadays so if you find yourself in Cannes looking for a hotel….

Château des Neuf Clefs. Nine Keys: what a lovely name! I looked online to see if I could see what it looks like today. Unfortunately it is no longer there, although there is still a part of the town known as Neuf Clefs.

Children doing what children do

These children are busy building sandcastles on the shore. It doesn’t matter where you go, or indeed when, there is always construction going on if there are children (and adults too!) on a beach. I hope that they finished before the tide came in.

Time for a snack

Four happy rabbits with fresh carrots to eat. These four date from around 1901 when the postcard was sent.

The Dormitory

Sometimes things just come together: One of the retired ladies that come to the house for conversation attends ‘old girl’ events that are held for ex-pupils of the school she attended. This postcard came to my attention recently, taken around 1900 it is the dormitory of a school.

This week I showed her a scan of it when she arrived and she confirmed that it was her old school. Not only that… Last week she attended an old girls lunch and they were discussing the bombing during the war. The school is situated close to a railway line. The dormitory was bombed during WWII and some of the girls and nuns were killed. Someone was at the reunion who was a pupil at the time and she remembers a mother arriving and taking her daughter away from the school just before. The mother told the nuns that she had had a dream about the school being bombed. The old girls discussed this and decided that the mother had probably been warned by resistance members – perhaps!

The lesson

I think most of us have done this when we were small: Teaching teddies, dolls and even little sisters (if I could get them to sit still for long enough). Looking back on those games, I realize that half of the fun was in preparing the game; making little copy booklets, finding pencils for everyone, writing out the lesson on the blackboard….

Postcards from the UK

Occasionally we buy postcards when we’re in the UK. Here are a couple of birthday postcards we found last year.

Happy Easter!

I wish you a very Happy Easter with lots of chocolate. It’s been a long winter so let’s hope that this weekend is a turning point for the weather.

Bessé-les-Echelles

I think that this postcard is the photographer’s idea of a joke. There is no such place as Bessé-les-Echelles (Echelle = ladder), the village is called Bessé-sur-Braye. Each house has a ladder leading to the upper window. I wonder why. Were the houses built without stairs to the upper floor? I looked around on Google earth and although I found some houses of similar architecture; I didn’t find this particular row.

Raphael Tuck and Sons

In 1866, Raphael Tuck and Sons started printing pictures and greeting cards in London. In 1893 Queen Victoria granted the firm the Royal Warrant of Appointment, which was continued by future sovereigns. Their first postcards were produced in 1900.

They produced many sets of illustrated postcards by notable artists of the time. Including sets of their famous “Oilette” postcards; some of which are textured to look and feel as if they have been painted in oils. I’ve written about Tuck’s postcards in the past.

These two postcards, illustrated by B Cobbe and posted around 1907, were published as part of a set by the Parisian branch of the company.

An advertisment

For a furniture depot in Bordeaux.  I wonder why they chose this picture as an illustration.  Perhaps their chairs are especially comfortable?

Merry Christmas!

Portraits

Two portraits of a little girl.  I can't read the dates on the postmark but my guess is between 1905 to 1913.

November 11th

Searching through postcard images on my computer for today 11th November I found plenty: Pictures of soldiers, pictures of ruins, pictures of cannons, pictures of battlefields, pictures of graves… Here are just a few:

Soldiers dream
 I dreamed kind Jesus fouled the big-gun gears;
And caused a permanent stoppage in all bolts;
And buckled with a smile all Mausers and Colts;
And rusted every bayonet with His tears.

Wilfred Owen

I'd keep these!

If I had the choice, this is a pair of postcards that I would keep for myself. I love the way in which they've been coloured. Such a pretty little girl too.

Posted before 1900

Two postcards from Paris posted before 1900. There aren’t many postcards that have survived this long.

The Moulin Rouge opened in 1889, just 10 years before this postcard was sent. The second postcard of  Les Invalides was posted in 1898.