Vintage Poster Archives
Cappiello Lampe Osmine 1910 | Vintage Advertising Poster
Cappiello Lampe Osmine 1910 | Vintage Advertising Poster
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A grinning red devil encircles himself with a ring of incandescent bulbs, set against an unbroken black ground. His antennae arc upward toward the bold golden-yellow display lettering of LAMPE OSMINE; below, in sober roman caps, FABIUS HENRION. NANCY. At the foot of the composition, in red italic serif, the Paris depot address. Nothing in the image wastes space. The mascot figure, the product name, the stock location: three elements, perfectly weighted.
Designed by Leonetto Cappiello (1875–1942) in 1910 and lithographed by Vercasson, Paris, for Fabius Henrion, the Nancy electrical equipment company founded by engineer Fabius Henrion in 1887 as one of Lorraine's first electricity distributors. Cappiello had been working under contract with Vercasson since 1900, producing several hundred posters across that decade. The Lampe Osmine belongs to his most concentrated period, and the composition exemplifies what Cappiello called the 'science of the blot': light figure against dark ground, reduced to its minimum effective form. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds an example (accession 86.4.31).
Reproduced as a fine art archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, with pigment-based inks for colour stability over time. The design dates from 1910 and is in the public domain; the print is produced to order.
Cappiello's Lampe Osmine is one of the cleaner expressions of his early 20th-century advertising language, predating the busier decorative tendencies that would follow in the 1920s. It appeals to collectors of early French graphic design, to those interested in the social history of electrification, and to anyone drawn to the particular confidence of a composition that knows exactly what it is doing.
