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Vintage Posters
During the first half of the 20th century posters were the most direct means of reaching a wide public. Prior to the late 1800's print advertising was restricted to black and white classified text. Through the invention, and then development of the stone lithographic printing technique by Jules Cheret, the world of vintage advertising posters was born. Finally capable of mass-producing advertisements in color, companies of the day became a magnet for a wide range of established and emerging artists such as Henri de Toulouse Lautrec, Alphonse Mucha, Theophile-Alexandre Steinlen to develop marketing ideas and create striking poster images. Only intended to last the short life of an advertising campaign, between 100 and 3000 posters were printed on inexpensive paper and placed throughout the city on billboards, subways and the sides of buildings. In a matter of weeks these posters were torn down or covered with the next advertisement. Very few pieces survived saved by collectors, printing houses, or the artists themselves. Until today the poster has lost nothing of its actuality or of its effective power. New experiences and knowledge repeatedly question the efficacy of the poster, but it constantly renews itself with the discovery of new forms of expression and assertion, born out of the struggle of graphic artists with the design problems of their time. Posters are barometer of social, economic, political and cultural events, as well as mirrors of our everyday lives.
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Art Glass
"The work of the furnace was proceeding fervently. At the end of the blowing irons, the molten glass swelled, twisted, became silvery as a little cloud, shone like the moon, crackled, divided into thousand infinitely fine fragments, glittering, slighter than the threads which we see in the forest at dawn stretching from branch to branch. The workmen were shaping harmonious vases, each as he operated obeying a rhythm of his own, generated by the quality of the matter and by the habit of movements most apt to dominate it. The apprentices would place a small pear-shaped mass of burning paste on the spot pointed out by the master, and the mass would lengthen out, twist, transform itself into a handle, rim, a spout, a foot, or a stem. The red heat would slowly die out under the instruments, and the half-formed chalice would again be exposed to the flame, and be drawn from it docile, ductile, sensitive to the slightest touches that adorned and refined it, conforming it to the model handed down by their fathers, or to the free invention of the new creator. The human gestures round those elegant creatures of fire, breath and iron, were extraordinarily nimble and light, like the gestures of a silent dance."
Gabriele D'Annunzio, The Flame of Life, 1900
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