A French bistro’s natural wall art is the poster art of its own culture: the café and cabaret scenes of Steinlen and Toulouse-Lautrec, the apéritif advertisements of Chéret and Cappiello. These images
Deep dive: Two Cats (1894)
Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen’s Two Cats (1894) comes from the Montmartre artist who, more than any other, made the cat a fixture of Belle Époque art. A committed observer of working-class Paris and a
Choosing posters for a cocktail bar
The right posters for a cocktail bar are the ones that invented its atmosphere: the Belle Époque cabaret and apéritif posters of 1890s Paris. Toulouse-Lautrec, Jules Chéret and Leonetto Cappiello drew
Deep dive: Casino de Paris (1891)
Jules Chéret’s 1891 poster for the Casino de Paris comes from the man who invented the modern colour poster. Two decades before Toulouse-Lautrec, Chéret had turned the Paris street into an open-air ga
Framing posters without glare
Glare is what makes a framed print look cheap in a bright room, and it has two cures: anti-reflective (‘museum’) glass, and placement that keeps the frame from facing a window or downlight. But good f
Deep dive: The Chap-book / Will H. Bradley (1895)
Will Bradley’s posters for The Chap-Book in 1894–95 are American Art Nouveau at its boldest — sinuous black-and-white ornament advertising a small Chicago literary magazine. Self-taught, steeped in Au
What size should you print a poster?
For a public room, 16×20 inches is the safe baseline and 24×36 the feature-wall size. But the right answer comes from three things: the resolution of your file, the wall and viewing distance, and the
Deep dive: Absinthe J. Édouard Pernot (1900)
Leonetto Cappiello’s 1900 poster for Absinthe J. Édouard Pernot is one of the founding images of modern advertising. Where the reigning master, Jules Chéret, filled his posters with swirling crowds, C
The best paper for art-print posters
The best paper for a vintage poster is an uncoated, acid-free matte fine-art stock of roughly 200–250 gsm, ideally with a slight tooth. It reproduces the flat, absorbent surface of the original lithog
Deep dive: Harper’s Magazine: Christmas (1897)
Edward Penfield’s cover poster for the Christmas 1897 Harper’s Magazine is a cornerstone of the American poster movement. As art director of Harper & Brothers through the 1890s, Penfield designed
