Art Deco advertising design – Cecchetto, c. 1930

“Gants · Dentelles · Parfumerie · Fleurs” [Gloves · Lace · Perfumery · Flowers], drawing with airbrush and gouache, made by Cecchetto around 1930. Signed upper right. Size: 23,1 x 37,9 cm.

The composition shows colourful flowers, a characteristic Art Déco parfumerie de luxe bottle, long pale evening gloves — then the symbol of Parisian élégance féminine — and, in the background, fine lacework.

This is not a finished poster but a so-called ‘maquette publicitaire‘: the preparatory design that an ‘affichiste‘ submitted to a store’s advertising department, from which the lithographer would then produce a large-format street poster or printed promotional card. The name of the store could be added at a later stage: on the poster itself, on a separate banderole, or on the plinth of a window display.

The wording on this design belongs to a recurring commercial formula of the Parisian grands magasins. Department stores such as Au Printemps, Le Bon Marché, Les Grands Magasins du Louvre, La Samaritaine and the Galeries Lafayette structured their retail year around fixed seasonal expositions. Alongside the January sale of white linen and the December sale of toys, February was traditionally devoted to special presentations of refined fashion accessories and toiletries: gloves, lace, flowers and perfumery.

Little is known about the artist Cecchetto, other than that later in the 1930s he designed a number of film posters in Paris.

Price: Euro 375,-