Vintage Poster Archives
Dorfinant Quinquina Duhomard c.1928 | Vintage Aperitif Poster
Dorfinant Quinquina Duhomard c.1928 | Vintage Aperitif Poster
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A waiter in a red uniform rides a galloping scarlet lobster, one arm raised to balance a teal tray carrying two wine glasses, rouge and blanc. The lobster dominates the centre of the composition in flat cadmium red with black shadow detail; the waiter above it grins, white-gloved, against a cream ground bounded by a loosely sponged pale blue border. 'DUHOMARD' is set at the foot in massive red slab-serif with heavy black shadow; 'QUINQUINA' arches above it in bold black capitals.
Designed by Albert Dorfinant, known by his working signature Dorfi, and printed by Affiches Camis of Paris around 1927 to 1930, the poster was commissioned for Duhomard's quinquina aperitif in both rouge and blanc variants. Quinquina, an aromatised wine fortified with quinine derived from cinchona bark, became one of the defining French aperitif categories of the interwar period, with brands competing through poster commissions of increasing invention. Dorfinant (1881–1976) worked across six decades of French commercial art, and his approach here owes a clear debt to the outsized-animal compositions Cappiello had made synonymous with French aperitif advertising in the previous generation: a single, implausible visual premise, waiter riding lobster, that fixes the brand in the memory.
The palette and the slab-serif lettering place this firmly in the French advertising vernacular of the late 1920s, combining the flat graphic economy that Art Deco was establishing with the figurative energy that the Belle Époque tradition had handed on. The poster is referenced in the Publicité catalogue (ref. 85) and has appeared in multiple specialist auction sales including Poster Auctions International and Swann Galleries.
Reproduced from a restored archival source on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper with pigment-based inks. Well suited to a kitchen, dining room, bar or any space where French interwar commercial art provides the visual reference.
