Vintage Poster Archives
Cristal Eau de Table 1935 | Bellenger Vintage Food Poster
Cristal Eau de Table 1935 | Bellenger Vintage Food Poster
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A woman with dark, wind-swept hair spins against a saturated red ground, her wide-sleeved green dress fanning outward into a skirt made entirely of Cristal Montrond bottle labels. She raises a tall stemmed glass of sparkling water. Cursive script to either side reads Pétillante and Légère. Above her, bold white display lettering announces CRISTAL over the spaced subtitle EAU DE TABLE. A white footer carries the producer's full name: Ste des Eaux Minérales de Montrond.
The design was produced by Pierre and Jacques Bellenger, brothers who trained at the Académie Julian in Paris and began their commercial career after winning the 1928 Colonial Exposition competition. Active across food, drink, transport, and fashion advertising through the 1930s–1960s, the Bellengers typically signed their work with a shared signature. The Cristal composition is among the most resolved examples of the trompe-l'oeil device they favoured: the product labels become the dancer's skirt, merging brand identity and subject in a single, flat-graphic image. The red and green palette of the poster mirrors the label colouring exactly, so the packaging itself is embedded into the design.
The Société des Eaux Minérales de Montrond produced sparkling table water from the Loire department of central France. The Cristal brand positioned the water as light and effervescent, and the poster's vocabulary, the spinning dancer, the uplifted glass, the words Pétillante and Légère, communicates that quality entirely through image, without a word of explanatory copy.
Reproduced as an archival print on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper. A natural fit for kitchens, dining rooms, and bar areas, and for anyone interested in French interwar commercial illustration.
