Paris Opera Costume Sketches – 19th Century

A collection of more than 40 original hand painted watercolor and gouache on paper costume illustrations, circa mid-nineteenth century, created chiefly by Paris Opera costume designer Alfred Albert. The costumes depicted are primarily from the Goignard brothers production of “La Biche au Bois,” which was a popular French fairy tale (or feerie) involving mystical realms, including an underwater kingdom populated with anthropomorphic sea creatures. The collection is housed in a typical late 19th century era scrapbook album and unfortunately suffers from severe foxing and discoloration due to acid and other impurities in the papers and chemical reactions with the glue used to secure the sheets to the scrapbook.

Les Diableries – 3D Visions of Hell from The 19th Century

With Halloween coming up I was reminded of a series of devilish photographs that I researched and wrote about years ago called Les Diableries. They were created in France in the mid-19^th century and they depict various scenes of life in Hell. Not only that but these images are “stereoscopic” meaning when you look at them with special lenses they appear in 3D! I got to be one of the first people to publish a modern detailed history of these images and the artists who created them, and I also wrote the Wikipedia entry for them. A couple of years after my publication another group of researchers, including Brian May (astrophysicist and lead guitarist for the rock band Queen), published their own book on the series.

Les Diableries: 3D Visions of Hell – A History

Horror Film Posters from France – 1950s and 60s

While working on a large collection of rare posters and lobby cards last year I became particularly obsessed with the horror movie posters produced in France during the 1950s and 60s, especially the large “Grande” sizes (roughly 63 by 46 inches). These posters were printed using old fashioned stone lithography techniques which produced extremely rich colors and details. I met with producer, director, and screenwriter John Landis to show him some of the works we were presenting for auction, as he is also a well-known poster aficionado, and he told me that while the U.S. and other countries had moved on to faster and more efficient methods of mass production, mainly offset lithography, the French were still using classic stone lithography techniques because of a system of laws designed to protect members of the printing guilds so that they wouldn’t lose their jobs to new technology. Most of the French Grande posters from this time period are surprisingly affordable, though earlier ones can sell for tens of thousands of dollars, such as the 1933 King Kong poster above which sold at Julien’s Auctions for over $35,000.