design

First editions of all three of George Auriol’s monogram books, with a rich array of designs for his artistic and literary colleagues in Paris and further afield. Polymathic poet and songwriter, part of the Chat Noir (along with his lifelong friend Erik Satie) Auriol created designs that became emblematic of Art nouveau Paris, together with his typography for the Metropolitain railway and type designs adapted by Peignot. The three volumes of monograms include marks for himself and his closest collaborator, Henri Rivière, as well as Stéphane Mallarmé, Octave Uzanne, the Théâtre du Chat Noir, Edmond Haraucourt, Anatole France, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Steinlen, Octave Mirbeau, Aristide Briand and Woodrow Wilson. Most display the clear influence of the pervading japonisme in contemporary Parisian design, with Auriol adapting the Japanese quasi-heraldic culture of the pictographic Japanese ‘mon’ to western lettering.

Publishers for whom Auriol supplied monograms included Ernest Flammarion, Quillot, Larousse, Hachette, Peignot et fils, Henri Laurens and we also find the earliest logo for Cadbury’s chocolate (1905, in the volume for 1907).

Each volume of the set is of regular trade issue (nonetheless issued in small numbers) and the 1924 volume bears an elegant inscription by Auriol in red ink to the publisher Pierre Monot, at the Larousse Mensuel — one of Auriol’s most important publishing connections. It also contains an autograph letter from Edmond Lauren on notepaper bearing his Auriol-designed notepaper. The 1907 volume contains two prospectuses.