This gambling token, or jeton, features the double-faced god Janus. With one eye looking to the past and the other to the future, the ancient Roman deity oversaw change — including change in luck and fortune. This is precisely what a nineteenth-century gambler might have hoped for as he cast the silver piece onto a...

This splendid presentation drawing was prepared for the prestigious civic commission to redesign the Place de la Concorde, one of the great public squares of Paris. When the viceroy of Egypt, Muḥammad ʿAlī, offered France an obelisk from the reign of Ramses II as a gift in 1831, the German-born designer Jakob Ignaz Hittorff was...

The Belle Époque was an explosion of optimism and cultural innovation and artistic endeavours. The Belle Époque, lasting from the 1870s up to WWI, was at its height in Paris during the 1890s and 1900s. It was a great time for art and theatre, and they converged to great success at the Theatre de la...

This lithograph, by artist Paul Jeffay (1898-1957) depicts the Left Bank of Paris, France, on what appears to be the Quai de la Tournelle. The main focus of the piece is on the bouquinistes, green boxes that line the Seine in the center of Paris, out of which booksellers sell used and antiquarian books. In...

After the dust had settled from WWII, people were ready to get back to (or experience for the first time) the good life that had been interrupted by decades of war and depression. These desires manifested quite literally on wallpapers, and during the 1950s there was a trend for designs depicting everything from household appliances...

Framed rectangular vignettes are vertically stacked like ashlar blocks on this French wallpaper ca. 1855-75. The frames are printed in yellow and brown and depict bead-and-reel molding. Two square scenes in the center of the page show men both leading horses to water and making them drink, but it’s the identical vignettes that span the...

Faux statues and architectural elements were standard production for French wallpaper manufacturers of the mid to late nineteenth century. In this ornamental paper panel commemorating a monument that commemorates a man, designers Dufour et Leroy have created a remarkably thorough copy of the Column of the Grande Armeé at the Place Vendôme in Paris. Work...

Before architecture firm Warren & Wetmore erected Gilded Age estate houses on Long Island, Newport country clubs, Park Avenue apartment blocks and the Beaux-Arts style Grand Central Station[1], Whitney Warren (1864-1943) spent ten formative years in Paris – from 1884 to 1894. Trained by historicists Honoré Daumet and Charles Girault at L’École des Beaux-Arts,[2] the...

Recognized for an Art Nouveau style all his own, French architect Hector Guimard (1867-1942) designed over a hundred buildings during a prolific fifteen-year span: 1898-1913. He is perhaps best known for having devised the iconic Paris Metro entrance in 1907, a wide-spread scheme employing standardized components that recreate natural forms through the structural and sculptural...