Vintage Poster Archives
Cappiello Prunelle Naltet 1904 | Vintage Advertising Poster
Cappiello Prunelle Naltet 1904 | Vintage Advertising Poster
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A white-faced jester emerges from a wooden barrel at the centre of a deep cobalt blue field, six arms thrown outward, each hand holding a stoneware bottle of Prunelle Naltet liqueur. Red-tighted legs cross at the ankle below the barrel base. The golden yellow headline type arches across the top in bold display lettering. In composition and palette this is Cappiello at his most physical: a single, high-contrast figure that announces itself from across a street.
Designed by Leonetto Cappiello (1875–1942) around 1904 and printed by P. Vercasson & Cie, 43 Rue de Lancry, Paris, the poster was commissioned by Naltet-Menand & Fils of Chalon-sur-Saône, the Burgundian distillery Thomas Naltet had founded in 1842 on a sloe-berry liqueur sold in distinctive stoneware jugs. The poster belongs to Cappiello's first years with his Vercasson contract, when he was systematically replacing the ornamental fin-de-siecle affiche with direct, bold-silhouette design. The six-armed barrel jester is the product made visible: abundant, slightly absurd, impossible to overlook.
The design circulated across Europe and is documented as a celebrated example of Cappiello's early Vercasson period. It sits at the point where caricature and advertising merge: the figure is character first, product vehicle second, which is why it still reads as a resolved composition rather than a period piece.
Reproduced from archival sources on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper, restoring the original cobalt blue ground and golden yellow type to full depth. Suits interiors drawn to early twentieth-century French graphic art, Burgundian food and drink culture, or the broader history of European advertising design.
