Today I invite you to discover an amusing collection of photographs, by Félix Potin. A French grocer born in 1820, Félix Potin opened his first grocery shop in 1844. The shop's slogan was ‘good quality, good weight and good prices’!
From then on, the brand grew with the opening of other grocery shops and even a factory. Félix Potin died in 1871, but his heirs continued to run the shop and the brand lived on through the first half of the 20th
century. The company was acquired by Docks de France in 1958, but the Félix Potin brand continued to exist until 1995.
While Félix Potin left its mark on the daily lives of many French people, the brand was also known for its commercial innovation and its modern approach to social progress.
The images in the ‘Contemporary Celebrities’ collection are one of the brand’s marketing products. When customers bought bars of Félix Potin chocolate, they received these beautiful images of artists, politicians and other French and foreign celebrities. The aim, of course, was to collect them.
Between 1898 and 1922, there were three series of 500 to 510 images. A fourth series was launched in 1952. The photographs were taken by some of the biggest names in the field, including Reutlinger, Nadar and Meurisse.
The first series can be identified by one feature: it doesn’t say ‘collection’ but ‘chocolates’ Félix Potin.
From 1900, the series became known as the ‘Félix Potin Collection’. In all, almost 1,900 portraits were used by grocery shops, to the delight of food-lovers and collectors!
Today, these images bear witness to the personalities who marked the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries.
There is a lot more to say because, alongside the photographic images, there are many chromos published by the Félix Potin brand which you can also discover on Delcampe, the collectors’ marketplace.
