VIVE LA FRANCE! LONG LIVE FRANCE!

This morning we had an early morning visit to the library by the French Ambassador to the United States Pierre Vimont, the French Foreign Trade Minister Anne-Marie Idrac, the Consul General of France at Miami Gaël de Maisonneuve, and others here in Miami to attend an important economic conference. In preparation for their visit, I had pulled a representative sampling of French materials in the library collection.

As Ms. Idrac had served as the President of RATP and SNCF (the public transportation departments for Paris and France) and others in attendance were involved in high speed train projects, I had pulled some materials related to railway service in France. These included a mid-nineteenth century French portfolio of color chromolithographic plates illustrating the interior decoration and design plans for the emperor’s royal train car, a small booklet about the railway line between Paris and Orléans published in 1908, a spiral-bound book with an aluminum-foil cover about the use of new alloys and materials in building modern trains, and an American children’s book with a beautiful color page spread of a speeding streamlined train from the 1930s.

There was also a sampling of various French world’s fair materials on the table, including several postcards from the Exposition international de l’Est de la France and portfolios from the Exposition internationale des arts décoratifs et industriels modernes (1925: Paris, France).

The architectural connection between the styles of the pavilions built for that latter fair and the Art Deco hotels here in Miami Beach did not go unnoticed. There were also a few rare Art Deco illustrated books and bindings for the visitors to peruse.

As always, some of our incredible propaganda materials were also laid out for their consideration. The visitors had the chance to look over a rare children’s book designed to teach young French children the alphabet even as they learned about their fathers’ participation in the Great War, 1914-1918.

We also had some propaganda pieces from the Second World War, some lampooning the German occupiers; others promoting allegiance to the collaborationist Vichy government.

One could not help but feel the cruel irony of reading such laudable sentiments as “One for all, and all for one” and “Long live France” in a propagandistic alphabet book produced by the Vichy regime. That same alphabet book also carried such insidious messages for children on other pages encouraging them to “punish the traitors”!

Of course, no tour of our French materials would have been complete without a review of some of the stunning pochoir portfolios in our collection. The pochoir (or “stencil work”) technique was popularized by French publishers in the “roaring twenties” and was used in deluxe edition illustrated books and in oversized portfolios promoting patterns for haute couture fashion, textiles, wallpaper, and designs to be applied to porcelains. The pochoir process required the creation of individual stencils for each color image in an illustration and the painstaking hand-application of brilliant gouache paints one after another. While the pochoir technique produced brilliant color images unmatched by any other contemporary industrial printing process, because it was so labor-intensive and expensive it quickly fell from fashion following the Stock Market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression.

GIFT OF RICHARD P. SCHICK

DISPLAY OF WWI PROPAGANDA FOR MIAMI DADE COLLEGE STUDENTS

This Friday, Sandra Castillo and twenty of her Miami Dade College students came to the Wolfsonian-FIU for a lecture presentation on the subject of World War I propaganda. Although the Wolfsonian has gained notoriety as a “must see” repository of materials documenting the Second World War, we also have a very strong collection of rare books, periodicals, and ephemera dating back to the earlier conflict.

When asked to consider how wars were won (or lost), most of the students immediately responded with lists of the obvious determinants: powerful armies, warships, airships, and tanks; the production and supply of war munitions; strategic battle plans and victories; manpower and the attrition of the enemy. The impact of propaganda on the morale of enemy and friendly soldiers at the front, and civilians on the home front, and the court of world opinion did not immediately register with the students as something of vital importance to the combatants. After looking over some of the propaganda materials laid out on the main reading room tables, however, many of the students began to understand that it wasn’t only material considerations that impacted a country’s ability to maintain the fighting spirit also necessary for prosecuting a long and bloody conflict over the course of several years.

The professor and her students were treated to a wide variety of propaganda materials produced by all of the protagonists participating in the Great War. Highlights included The great war victory album and The century edition de luxe of Raemaekers' war cartoons; two recruiting posters aimed at an African American audience; postcards from Italy, France, and the United States aimed at lifting morale on the home front by lampooning the enemy; song books and sheet music covers designed to inspire patriotism and faith in final victory.

Among the items that proved most popular with the students were those books ostensibly written for children, but also designed to win over parental readers and an adult audience. Although our collection originally included a fair number of rare propaganda books designed for a juvenile audience, our holdings were dramatically augmented thanks to a generous donation by Pamela K. Harer in 2007 of more than one hundred children’s propaganda books from the First and Second World Wars. Several of the latter books have been included here, and others displayed in an earlier exhibition can be accessed by clicking on the title of the blog.