French postcard, unused. Photographer? Carré. Publisher: E.L.D. Series or number: 4274. Circa 1910s – 1920s.
Price: $50.00
The first of two “Halloween-ish” offerings…..
This one is a French postcard that someone used as a trade card to advertise La Pilule Clérembourg (Véritable Grain de Vie), a product, in pill form, touted to help digestion, purify the blood, strengthen one’s overall countenance and increase the appetite. An ad back in 1859 indicates they’d been known, at that point, for over a century. The company also produced a cough syrup:
Our postcard front: shows a person in a woman’s dress, stockings and shoes, wearing an over-sized papier mâché head – that of an older man with a mustache. I’m not sure whether there may be a specific French term that applies here, but this type of figure is similar to the Spanish Cabezudos.
Publisher logo for E. L. D.
Ernest le Deley (1859 – 1917)
From fr.wikipedia.org and translated via DeepL.com (free version):
Ernest Le Deley, born on July 12, 1859 in Mont-Saint-Aignan and died on August 6, 1917 in the 5th arrondissement of Paris, was one of the leading French postcard publishers and printers of the Belle Époque.
Ernest Le Deley was a phototypesetter living at 8 rue Berthollet, Paris, in 1886. He married Joséphine Petit on October 15, 1898 in Bugnicourt, while working as a printer-photographer in Châteaudun. A publisher of national renown, around 1900 he had a phototype printing shop at no. 73 rue Claude-Bernard in Paris, and a sales outlet at no. 127 boulevard de Sébastopol, at the corner of rue de Tracy. From 1906, he went into partnership with Achille Siron, a publisher in Barbizon. In 1911-1912, he opened a branch in Rouen, at no. 62 rue Saint-Nicolas. On December 20, 1913, a fire destroyed his postcard publishing plant at 11-13 rue des Arquebusiers in Paris.
He died at his home, no. 41 rue Censier in Paris, and was buried in the Parisian cemetery at Ivry-sur-Seine.
His son Maurice-Ernest, who succeeded him, went bankrupt in 1922.
Sources: Didot-Bottin’s Annuaire-Almanach du Commerce de l’Industrie. January 1859 (google.com/books).
Processional giant. n.d. en.wikipedia.org (accessed October 30, 2024).
Ernest le Deley. https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Le_Deley (accessed October 30, 2024).
