Vintage Poster Archives
Robbialac Enamel Paint c.1920 | French Advertising Poster
Robbialac Enamel Paint c.1920 | French Advertising Poster
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A boy in a white toque and painter's uniform sits atop a Robbialac crate, one hand raising a dripping brush over a red vintage automobile, the other holding the brand's cylindrical paint tin aloft. A yellow motorcycle with sidecar stands to the right. Everything is set against a deep cobalt blue ground, the ROBBIALAC name running the full width of the poster in heavy gold lettering. The lower tagline, 'Faites comme moi / Emaillez vous-même vos / Cycles, Motos, Autos', addresses the buyer directly and plainly.
Robbialac was a cold enamel paint marketed across Europe for metal surfaces, with particular appeal to the swelling interwar market of cyclists, motorcyclists, and motorists refinishing their own machines. The brand name is drawn from Luca della Robbia, the fifteenth-century Florentine ceramicist celebrated for his vitreous coloured glazes, a lineage that anchored the product's claims to colour richness and durability. Secondary text on the poster notes the product is available 'en noir et en couleurs', covering both utilitarian and decorative application. The caricature illustration style, broad in humour and confident in colour, sits within the tradition of French commercial lithography shaped in the years following Leonetto Cappiello's establishment of the caricature poster as the dominant form of Parisian street advertising.
No artist signature is confirmed on this piece. The composition dates to the early-to-mid 1920s, consistent with the proliferation of home-motoring products in post-war France and with the lithographic style of the period.
Reproduced on 200gsm Enhanced Matte Fine Art Paper using pigment-based archival inks. The cobalt-and-gold palette and the direct address of the design carry well at print scale.
