Is No Me

If any old photo nuts are out there who recognize this vision of loveliness, do please let me know!   Photo, which seems to have been marked up for use in a magazine in the 1930s, discovered in Paris, at flea market stalls off Rue St Paul.  I confess that expression-wise and tweedy-coat-wise, this lady might be mistaken by some for me.  I have never, however, let a cigarette ash grow so dangerously long that Smokey the Bear might have to be called in.  I'd say she's definitely French.   Perhaps Marguerite Yourcenar on a *very* good day?

Effortless Skill

French children's book cover, ca. 1920. 

Team Père Lachaise: Today's Lineup

Guignol Toupée by Brian

I require help of Toupinet, for sure: floppy forelock of recently adopted Beach Boy hairstyle, has gotten just a little bit too floppy.  I was hoping to look like Brian Wilson, ca., release of "Don't Worry, Baby."  But I don't think it's working.

Nous Sommes T-Ball

I begin laborious but enjoyable job of sorting through massive pile of vintage postcards, ticket stubs, old illustrated papers, anonymous photos I acquired over the past three months in Paris.  Keep watching this space.

Here: a lurid specimen of French starter kitsch from the 1940s or 1950s: glossy pixie flesh and hair tousled just so--au point.

Last Paris Days

....and a final wander around the Cimitière Montparnasse.  One of its less fortunate inhabitants.   

I Carried It Off With My Usual Aplomb

Antoinette & Blerio: or, The Up-Ended Monoplane

I've only just figured out this delightful card.  Googling "Antoinette & Blerio" led me at once to the celebrated French aviator and inventor Louis Blériot, who in 1909 made the first flight across the English Channel in a heavier than air aircraft. "Blériot was also the first," says Wikipedia, "to make a working, powered, piloted monoplane and the founder of a successful aircraft manufacturing company."  But Google was also twigging on "Antoinette"--a French manufacturer of "light petrol engines" of the very sort used by Blériot in his various experimental aircraft at the start of the twentieth century.  ("Antoinette also became a pioneer-era   builder of aeroplanes before World War I, most notably the record-breaking monoplanes flown by Hubert Latham and René Labouchèr.")

Ah, now it all makes sense: the impossible contraption the aerialist "Blerio"  is using (improbably)  to stand on here is part up-ended monoplane!   The place of performance is "sur the Champ d'Aviation"--probably referring to the Champ d'aviation de la Brayelle, an airfield near Arras, where Blériot tested some of his early planes.

Now the Collector must ponder: she thought to put this recently-acquired card in her large image-binder devoted to turn-of-the-century circus acts, but now it seems to be in the category of  "aviation" card.

One is Not Born A Woman, One Becomes a Woman

Teaching The Second Sex here to Stanford-in-Paris students: having difficulty engaging them in it---all those issues seems indeed *so long ago*.  The 'Female Masquerade' seemingly more entrenched than ever.....

All Cats Are

19th-century trade card

Our Special Outfits: Two Cartes de Visite

                                                                                                                                                                                  

 

Belle Epoque Advert

Have become fascinated by La Samaritaine, 19th-century Art Nouveau department store on the Rue de Rivoli.  Currently closed, while megabillionaire Japanese owners, who recently purchased the huge complex--complete with thermal baths-- try to figure out what to do with it.  This beautifully green-colored advertisement, with haughty child and lady (mother?) gently holding gloved hand of other lady, captures the antique glamor of the place.

Portrait on Wood

Found in little antiques shop in the Marais this week: a photograph attached to a piece of wood then handpainted.  I've not seen this particular handling of the photo before, and all one can say is the colorist knew what he/she was doing.  The comparison with "hand-tinted" tintypes and cartes de visite one comes across in the US hardly favors the latter.

Paris Street Art

Super cholesterol, too.

Paris Est Étrange Department

Advert in a café window on the Boulevard Raspail.  The arms and legs are peculiarly disturbing.

Preserve Us...

...from Kidney and
Bladder Affections.

Audouard

A large cabinet card from Barcelona--world-wide source of good things.  I think it's a young woman, but Pierrot is a notoriously ambisexual archetype.

Casa de Mañana Redux

My mother's retirement home in the 1920s.  It was a Social Register-type hotel then.  Famous guests: Amelia Earhart, J. Edgar Hoover.  Or so they say.   Today: institutional cookery and lots of laundry to do.