69.00 USD
Welcome to our artifacts section. We decided we needed a place to showcase unusual items that present, beyond what they are themselves, unique historical qualities. Over time, we'll be shifting our autographed postcards into this section, as well as listing other very special items.
Would you like an invitation to Cinderella's ball? Well, we cannot arrange that, but we do have an invitation to a "masquée" at the Casino de Paris, from 1892. This invitation was apparently given to Mlle. Suzanne Derval, bears her name, and was embossed with the seal of the Casino de Paris. The invitations were no doubt limited to a select number of people, and the embossing was perhaps done to avoid the possibility of a workshop assistant of Monsieur Appel's running off a dozen extra invitations and handing them out to friends.
Our fourth listing image is of a postcard of Mlle. Derval herself, showing off some very fancy striped bloomers. This card will soon be available elsewhere in our shop, but is not for sale with this listing.
The illustration is unsigned. Looks quite a lot like Cheret's work, and was printed by F. Appel, the lithographer well known for his stone lithograph poster prints of Belle Epoque Poster artists' works (Cheret among them) that run to the thousands of dollars these days.
A remarkable, magical, piece of Belle Epoque history. We'll hop into our time machine and see you there :)