Paris, Omnium Français de Publicité, 1926.
Small folio [315 x 210 mm] of 24 plates printed in colour. Preserved in wrappers as published, in its limp vivid orange paper cover, title “Carnaval” and figure of a woman with a black eye mask on the front cover. Three stamps affixed on the front cover. Original wrappers.
Rare testimony of the costumes and party accessories trade in Paris during the Roaring Twenties
Sales catalogue published by a French costume merchant on the occasion of the 1927 carnival, complete with its 24 folio plates presenting more than 450 items.
A table of contents lists at the back of the cover the numerous items appearing in the catalogue: eye masks and dominos, children, men and women’s cardboard masks, half-faces and noses, jersey masks, artistic masks, beards and moustaches, wigs, tambourines, big heads of blind man’s buff, items for decoration of floats, many costumes (clown, Pierrots, Harlequin, cow-boy, Marchioness, Norman peasant, Carmen, Columbine, Fairy, Fisherman, Bécassine, …), various hairstyles, paper headgears, Christmas items ( Father Christmas costume, Christmas clogs, …) etc.
Each item for sale is illustrated in colour. The present copy even contains on the first page the confidential discount coupon of 40% made by the salesman. Carnival and disguised parties were very popular in the inter-war years, a time during which entertainment was strongly looked after to forget the horrors of war. Men and women went to the movies, to the salons, to the dance halls, in order to dance, laugh and party. This catalogue is really representative of the atmosphere that still reigned in Paris at the end of the Roaring Twenties and on the brink of the 1929’s crash. Precious catalogue entirely printed in colour, presenting the full range of masks, costumes and party accessories available in France for the 1927 carnival.
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