Saturday, March 03, 2007

The Poster Silo

La Captive - Fin de Siecle theatre poster


Le Courrier Français


Les Atrof cirque


Les Deux papillons - circus poster


L'Annuaire universel illustré 1894


Cycles Jussy & Cie


Deux musiciennes


D'Jelmako Le Blondin indien


Eden-Théatre - french poster


indiens au combat - french theater poster


poster - Le Monde avant la création de l'homme


Casino Remois


french poster - Ambri et Piotti, Hottentot à l'oeil blanc


fin de siecle affiche - Cinématographe Lumière


poster - Paris à Trouville-Deauville


Cocher au Casino


Bains de la Bourse et de la presse


poster - Bal des increvables


Bazar du chateau d'Eau - french poster


Brothers Walcomb - circus poster


affiche - 1re exposition d'aquarelle & dessins


circus sketch


Alcazar d'Eté champs Elysées - poster


Ambassadeurs - original excentric - Brunin


poster - Almanach comique

In the early 1990s the town of Chaumont (S.E. of Paris) decided to use the dormant agricultural silos of the Haute-Marne region of France as a shelter for old books and posters from a former library. In 1994 La maison du Livre et de l’Affiche (The House of the Book and the Poster) opened its doors.

The core of their collection consists of some 5000 Fin de Siècle posters which were assembled by the town Mayor in the late 19th century. The Silo is considered an international centre with respect to theatre, dance and opera graphic arts.

3000 of these posters are available online via la médiathèque site of the Silo ('affiches anciennes'). It is a 'servlet' arrangement so it will time out if you don't keep looking around and you can't open multiple tabs/windows. I found clicking on the titles beneath the image and then the 'TIF' image link at the bottom of the subsequent page the easiest way to get to the larger versions (which do open in a new tab/window).

Note there are metadata categories once you click through - meaning you can look at just circus or just theatre or eccentric etc posters. I've only seen the first 1000 posters and of those there were perhaps 3 that I was sure I had seen previously. I think the above selection is a fair representation - a lot of circus and theatre, with regular eccentric pictures, occasional sketches and rarely, there are things like art book images. Overall this is a fantastic site but many of the works are quite dark so all of the images above were tweaked at least a little bit. Click for full size versions and mouseover for titles.

11 comments :

Unknown said...

This link does not work for me

peacay said...

Nor me. Hmm. Well I can't imagine it's getting anything like a 'slashdot effect' and this link doesn't appear to have been posted around at all. I can only suggest trying again later. It's not an overnight site - it is sure to come back up.

Unknown said...

Thanks.
Also I should have thanked you for all your good work. I really enjoy the blog.

lotusgreen said...

i got it this afternoon, but when i went back, it was inaccessable again. but wow--what a great site! thanks.

and then also, the "secret code word" on blogs hasn't always been showing up so i couldn't leave a response earlier.

nankie said...

Amazing. Thank you for those beautiful images.

peacay said...

Cheers!
I've been back a couple of time with success. I suppose it's one of those places where you have to form an orderly queue! No pushing in.

Gypsy Purple said...

Thanx for this link...stunning!!!!

matlop said...

una maravilla
gráfica este blog!!


gracias
M_:

Federico Díaz Mastellone said...

Excellent link... pk

Thanks again :)

Rama said...

Thank you for this excellent link!
I tried to download in tif format but I can't seem to manage... could you explain me how to? thank you again!

peacay said...

Click on 'Affiches anciennes'.
Click on the title underneath the poster.
Click on the word 'documents' above the image.
Click on the '+' sign.
Et voila! The tif file.

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