I currently volunteer at the charity consignment shop, Next-to-New. I also write their blog, "Treasures from Our Trove," highlighting a weekly unusual find. Today, after finishing my shift, I was walking through the sales floor, looking for something blog worthy, when I found this delightful picture of a demure bathing beauty.
She is an illustration from French luxury magazine, "the Journal des Dames et des Modes." The Journal, which ran only from 1912 through 1914, was aimed at an educated, urban, sophisticated, fashionable, and wealthy, clientele. The magazine was extremely exclusive and printed in limited quantities. Although its pages included stories, travel articles, and poetry, its focus was on fashion. Instead of being bound, the Journal was issued as a folder containing original hand-colored prints by some of the finest Art Deco artists of the period. Most of these limited edition prints were "pochoirs," created by using a series of stencils for applying each different color. However, this earlier illustration is a hand-tinted etching.
Dated 1912 and entitled "Costume de bain en taffetas changeant," the work is by André Maurice Albert Pécoud, a French artist who worked as an illustrator for many magazines of the period, and was also a renown painter and poster artist. "Taffetas changeant" refers to "shot silk," a silk fabric woven with different colors of warp and weft threads, producing an iridescent fabric. Maybe that is why our lovely bathing belle looks a bit distraught, as she is worried about how salt water might change her "taffetas changeant."
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