Lessertisseux Fox and Crane, 1890

File — Box: CFC Trade Cards Box 5

Identifier: CFC2018.0454.1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

From the Collection:

The Carlson Fable Collection is a gathering of primary fable materials at Reinert Alumni Memorial Library at Creighton University. It grew out of the personal collection of fable materials gathered by Rev. Gregory Carlson, S.J. and was given to the Creighton Libraries in 1996. There are more than 10,000 books and approximately 8,000 artifacts in the collection.

From plates to stamps, from cards to whiskey decanters, from toys to posters, you'll find just about anything you can imagine here. Please explore all that is to offer here in my fables Catalogue of Objects.

This is the largest online catalog of fable related objects on the internet. Many are from Aesop's Fables but you will find La Fontaine, Velazquez and Krylov also represented in this collection.

Dates

1890

Extent

12 Cards : 6 colored French cards with gold background picturing La Fontaine's FC. Paris: Lessertisseux. ; Almost 3" x almost 4½".

Language of Materials

French

Additional Description

Abstract

These are curious cards. The background is heavily gold with a few emblematic items, like a path and a few trees. The characters are all children highly dressed in adult clothing. Their faces form the focal point of each illustration. A particular curiosity of these portrait-formatted small cards is that the characters' clothing changes from card to card in the six moments of the story. Are we to think that a little troop of players are taking turns at acting out one scene each? The bottom portion of each picture page contains a few lines of the La Fontaine fable. This print, like the title at the card's top, is hard to read against the gold background. Each card in the Cocq set is stamped on the picture side with "A. Motte-Bergeot, Nouveautées a Illiers," which seems to sell furniture as well as men's, women's, and children's clothing. The text side of these cards is taken up completely with a uniform advertisement for Motte-Bergeot. I am especially impressed with the third card, on which "Renard" flatters the vain figure seated in the fork of the tree.