Lettres Decoratives

Since the nineteenth century, sign painters have colored the streets of French cities with eye-catching letters in styles ranging from the elegant to the eccentric. Early sourcebooks of their craft, large chomolithographic portfolios offered these painters a dazzling variety of model alphabets to use as inspiration, teaching aids, and shows of skill. Introduced by expert sign painter Morgane Côme, this book gathers selections from fifteen of the most stunning and important of these portfolios published from the 1830s to the 1930s, accompaniedby period photographs of lettering in the streets of Paris.