We recently came across a third copy (on the right) of ‘Sérénade Divine‘ which is printed in brown and gold, using an ink pigmented with bronze powder. The moon completely faded away and Pierrot looks like shrubbery.
We continue our search for bizarre double items in our collection of sheet music. In a previous post, we showed the creativity of illustrators and/or music publishers to produce additional print runs. We don’t have the answers on the why and when of graphical omissions, additions and changes. Some were intended and crudely created. Others happened brilliantly by accident or were economically inspired. When stumbling on these trouvailles we are puzzled, disconcerted, amused or perplexed. Perhaps you’ll share these emotions with us when comparing the following pairs…
‘Emigrant Valsen‘ (1928): migration to America as the topic of a waltz. Harald Gelotte illustrated the dramatic experience differently for Swedish (left) and Norwegian migrants (on the right). Even the three funnels of the ocean liner had to be decorated correspondingly.Both covers were designed by Renée Keuller for the 1936 commemoration of Astrid of Sweden, queen of Belgium between 1934 and 1935. She died at the age of 32 in a car crash, and was mourned in Belgium (left cover) in a different style than in Sweden (right edition).Both these covers seem to make reference to an (implausible) automobile race during WWI. The right copy is a bit more joyous.In the Forties the publisher relaunched Hannay’s march of WWI, with a makeover of the cover.The drawing by Faria of a running newspaper seller has been reused, and enhanced with an additional bed scene, by another publisher for a different song (with almost the same title). Strange.The left cover for ‘Susie‘ is likely Roger de Valerio’s original design for the American song (‘If You Knew Susie’) that Salabert launched in France in 1925. Later, when the song became a success at the Moulin Rouge revue, it was important to put a photograph of hit-machine Mistinguett on the cover, thus spoiling the elegance, simplicity and delicacy of the first design.
If you’ve never been to the Moulin Rouge to hear Mistinguett sing Susie, here is your chance!
Perhaps you’d prefer to hear and see the American ‘Susie‘? We found this version sung by Eddie Cantor:
We close this post with a wonderful design for the cover of ‘If You Knew Susie’ by Orla Muff (1925). Classy!
We begin with a happy, but politically incorrect cover. It was created in 1919 by the 16-year old Orla Muff. Probably with his father’s help. The drawing puts us in a good mood. Nothing like a jazzy, swinging tune to accompany our next story.
‘Albion Jazz‘, music by Georg Rygaard. Illustration by C(hristian?) & Orla Jacobsen Muff (Kobenhavn, 1919).Detail and signature on the sheet music cover: the ‘C.’ in the signature suggests that Orla Muff’s father, the lithographer Christian Jacobsen, probably helped his son with one of his first assignments.
The Danish artist Orla Muff (1903-1984) was born in Copenhagen as Orla Andreas Heinrik Jacobsen. At fourteen Muff won a drawing competition and subsequently saw his series of postcards published and reprinted several times. When he entered the technical school (1917-1921) he started to call himself Muff. At the same time he worked as an apprentice of Carl Lund, a designer of stage sets.
Orla Muff’s winning postcard of a 1918 drawing contest. He was then 14 years old (source: Danske Postkortkunstnere).
Muff started his professional career by drawing sets and costumes for different theaters in Denmark. He also worked as a set designer for the Mayol Theatre in Oslo. From the photographs of Norwegian singer Kirsten Flagstad we can imagine the kind of artwork Muff created for the operette costumes during the early twenties.
Kirsten Flagstad’s costumes for operettes at the Mayol Theatre (source: DigitaltMuseum Norway)
Later on Muff worked for Ernst Rolf’s revues in Stockholm and at Max Reinhardt’s theatre in Berlin. He designed posters, made drawings for magazines and illustrated the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen.
Muff’s illustration for the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen (source: Fleson Postkortgalleri)
On a collector’s website we found almost two hundred of Muff’s Christmas postcards! Was it a lucrative job since his early days, or had he a penchant for sleighs, bells, gnomes, geese and snowmen? We made the following selection.
We couldn’t resist making a collage of Muff’s themes from his Christmas cards (source: Fleson Postkortgalleri)
In the early thirties Orla Muff started with oil paintings: portraits, mythologically inspired scenes, stylised figures and even abstract compositions in light colours. Not really our thing.
Muff’s sheet music covers were commissioned by the above mentioned Ernst Rolf, but also by the Swedish publishers Skandinaviska Musikförlaget and Musikaliska Knuten. The following images are proof that Orla Muff is the cream of the crop amongst Art Deco graphic artists. Almost nothing has been published on Muff and it is hard to find examples of his work. Our post partly fills the gap. We hope it is a nudge for a deeper study or monograph on this creative Scandinavian designer. Meanwhile, enjoy looking at the following covers!
‘Femina‘, music by Sven Rüno (1923)‘Bal Album, Band I‘ (s.d.); ‘Whispering Foxtrot’ (1920)‘If you love me‘, music by Jules Sylvain (1924)‘My Sister‘ (s.d.); ‘Bal Album, Band III‘ (1923)‘På galej‘, music by Rudolph Nelson (1924)‘Bal Album, Band IV‘ (1924); ‘Flickan ifrån Mittens rike‘ (1921)‘I min bar‘, music by Rudolph Nelson (1924)‘Mr. Wu‘ (1922); ‘Elastic‘ (1921)‘Han är så söt och rar‘, music by Harald Mortensen (1925)‘Sappho‘ (1923); ‘Ständigt jag minns‘ (1922); ‘Inga Lill‘ (1923); ‘Sonja‘ (1920)‘Smaragden‘, music by Einar Cronhammar (1923)
Postcard of a ‘Marchand de plaisirs’, late 19th or early 20th century
‘Marchands de plaisirs’ were cookie vendors in France. They announced their arrival into villages and markets by rattling a metal handle on a wooden board: clac-clac! They carried and protected their cookies in a large cylindrical container. On the lid of the drum was a roulette wheel. Children, but also elder customers, paid a few coins to spin the wheel that would tell them how many cookies they won.
A more luxurious cookie container than the one photographed on the postcard above.
The cookies were called plaisirs, which is the French word for ‘pleasures’. These were simple very thin wafers rolled into a cylinder or cone.
Wafer-thin rolled cookies, called ‘plaisirs’ (also known as ‘oublies’ or ‘oublis’).
Recently I saw a wooden variant of the container at The House of Alijn, a museum in Ghent dedicated to everyday life. It thus appears that the game or treat was also popular in Belgium during the late 19th and early 20th century. But in the Flemish variant no wafers were involved: one could win roasted hazelnuts or almond-vanilla flavoured macaroons instead. The device though was cleverly rigged: the odds were higher to win nuts rather than the more prized macaroons.
Belgian container ‘Makaronkast’ at the House of Alijn, Ghent
Marchands de plaisirs or ‘pleasure vendors’ have been active in France since the Late Middle Ages. They were then called oublieurs or vendors of oublies, the original name for thecookies of which the origin is closely linked to the bread used in catholic liturgy. Their trade was to wander through the streets of Paris every night and to go into the bourgeois households after supper to offer their wafers as desert. However, under the pretext of an innocent cookie-lottery, many of them organised illegal high-stakes gambling and some of them even robbed their patrons. So oublieurs became known as rascals, crooks and thieves. Soon the police forbade these con men to enter the houses at night and imperceptibly the oublieurs vanished. They were succeeded by the marchands de plaisirs who sold their wafers in the public space.
‘Le Marchand de Plaisirs‘, waltz composed by Marcel Lattès and cover illustrated by Poulbot (published by Eschig, Paris, 1923).
The lifestyle of the vendor of pleasures inspired the imagination of songwriters and storytellers. Le Marchand de Plaisirs is a waltz composed in 1923 for a silent movie with the same name. The dashing actor Jaque Catelain, who also played the leading role of the vendor named Gosta, directed it. Gosta is a poor young man with an alcoholic father and a ragged mother. He falls in love with a beautiful and rich lady. When his father breaks into her home to steal, Gosta shoots him dead and returns the loot to the beautiful lady. She is thankful to Gosta but marries her rich fiancée –also played by Catelain- who is the spitting but nonetheless more sophisticated image of Gosta. In short, the perfect plot for delicious late night television.
The composer of the waltz is Marcel Lattès who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943. The sheet music cover for Le Marchand de Plaisirs was illustrated by the Montmartre personality Francisque Poulbot who also designed the film poster.
Jaque Catelain as illustrated by Poulbot for the movie ‘Le Marchand de Plaisirs’ (left) and a still of Jaque Catelain (right).
The cover for Gaston Maquis’ song about the female vendor of pleasures was created by one of our favourite illustrators: Léon Pousthomis. His sharp drawing makes it perfectly clear that her all-male clientele is not interested in buying cookies but in another kind of pleasure. Are they game enough to spin her wheel?
‘La Marchande de Plaisirs‘, music by Gaston Maquis, cover illustrated by Pousthomis (La Chanson Moderne, Paris, ca. 1905)
