Vintage Poster Archives
Cappiello Syndetikon 1905 | Vintage Advertising Poster
Cappiello Syndetikon 1905 | Vintage Advertising Poster
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A child in a red suit stands astride a grey city skyline, arms raised overhead, pressing a small tube of glue against the base of a vast ringed planet. Saturn's body swirls in yellow-green and blue; its broad amber-orange ring arches across the full width of the composition. The sky behind is deep cobalt, scattered with small white stars. Above: 'Syndetikon' in thick yellow block letters. Below: 'Klebt, leimt, kittet alles', sticks, glues, cements everything, in green sans-serif. The entire selling proposition of an adhesive product is reduced to one image: the glue strong enough to hold Saturn's rings in place.
Designed by Leonetto Cappiello (1875–1942) and printed by P. Vercasson, Paris, around 1905, the poster was commissioned for Syndetikon, the German adhesive produced by Otto Ring & Co. Cappiello had signed an exclusive contract with Vercasson in 1900 and was at this point producing the inventive single-gesture compositions that would define his reputation. He deliberately rejected the layered decorative approach of the Art Nouveau period in favour of one bold image against a saturated ground, a method he applied to brands from Campari to Chocolat Klaus. The Syndetikon commission shows that method at its most playful: product claim translated into a visual at planetary scale.
Cappiello is widely cited as a founding figure of modern advertising design. Over his career he produced more than 530 advertising posters, each built on the same principle: one memorable image, immediately legible at street distance. The Syndetikon poster, with its cobalt sky and Saturn-scale hyperbole, demonstrates why that principle proved so durable.
Reproduced from a carefully restored archival source and printed on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. A natural fit for collectors of early 20th-century commercial lithography, Cappiello enthusiasts, and anyone who values the graphic inventiveness of the pre-war advertising poster.
