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Lessertisseux Grasshopper and Ant, 1890

 File — Box: CFC Trade Cards Box 5
Identifier: CFC2018.0454.2

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

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

Language of Materials

French

Abstract

These are curious cards. The background is heavily gold with sparse suggestive scenery, especially ripe fields, storehouse doors, and snow on the ground. The characters are children 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 seem to change clothing (and faces?) from scene to scene in the five moments of the story pictured here. 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. They give the clue to the order of cards, which is difficult to decipher from the pictures alone. The print of these texts, like the titles at the cards' top, is hard to read against the gold background. The text side of four cards is taken up completely with a uniform advertisement: "Grand Magasins de Nouveautés/Au Progrès/Vallée Ainé" with an address in Caen. The verso of other cards is blank. Perhaps the best of the illustrations is the fourth, in which the niggardly ant asks what the cicada did during the summer.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

€20 from Librairie Prologue, St. Ouen, August, '15. Extra set of five cards (missing "The Greeting at the Ant's Door") for 75 Francs from Annick Tilly, Clignancourt, August, '01.

Repository Details

Part of the Creighton University Libraries, Archives & Special Collections Repository

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