Cargo Handling 1932

A set of 1932 collector cards from Liebig, a portfolio of dockside views showing the loading and unloading of cargo ships.  Motor vehicles and locomotives are craned through the air along with minerals, while grain is loaded on board via a system of tubes and pipes.  These scenes have largely disappeared from today’s ports where the shipping container reigns supreme.  Very few items can’t be compressed or disassembled into a container. It was a spectacle that would have appealed to the technically minded child of the time growing up in the era of the Meccano Magazine (which itself featured many such illustrations on its covers).  The style of illustration has evolved with the times - gone is the precision and finesse that graced the cards of earlier decades to be replaced by more simplified drawing with heavier contours and a heightened colour palette.

 

Galeries Lafayette Summer 1932

Parisian department stores have a long tradition of the pursuit of extravagance and opulence in terms of display and product range. Galeries Lafayette had been trading on Boulevard Haussmann since 1912 and was famous for its central circular atrium capped by a spectacular Art Nouveau glass dome. This catalogue dates from 1932 just as the Great Depression was making itself felt in France - unemployment soared as economic growth stagnated. Fertile ground for the extreme Right, which surged on a rising tide of xenophobia and Anti-Semitism. The point of a department store was to cater to every conceivable customer desire and the 1932 offer extended to over 180 pages of hand drawn illustrations and blocks of descriptive text. Customers based in provincial France could keep pace with Parisian taste using the mail order form to bring sophistication to their doorsteps. Production values were modest with colour confined to the cover and letterpress printing on cheap paper. The range of goods is still impressive with clothing and footwear to the fore - but space was also found for the more obscure items such as communion dresses, baby carriages and reliquaries. The receptive reader would be engulfed by this avalanche of delights, an oceanic vision of plenty, poised to shower its blessings in return for the most modest of financial outlays.