Entrance to the Passage des Panoramas, double-surprise fan by Susse, circa 1815
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Entrance to the Passage des Panoramas, double-surprise fan by Susse, circa 1815
Panoramic disc screen showing the entrance to the Passage des Panoramas circa 1815, with the Susse brothers' stationery store and merchandise on the right: double surprise screens.
A small wooden knob on the reverse allows a series of figures to scroll on and under a footbridge, visible by transparency.
Cardboard and tracing paper screen, engraved and painted. Canvas on reverse.
Turned wooden handle
Good general and functional condition (tears to front tracing paper and on paper back near the knob).
H : 39 cm
A very rare example of this type of screen, with a beautiful mise en abyme (a screen from the paper manufacturer Susse presenting the screens for sale, and even one sold to a lady from behind).
Nicolas Susse, who had trained as an engraver, joined forces with André Schrantz, a "technical artist", to manufacture "fancy embossed stationery". In 1804, together with the younger brother Michel-Victor Susse (a paper maker also), they opened a store at 7, passage des Panoramas to market this luxury stationery. Success came quickly. They enlarged their store by renting number 8 of the passage, and in 1836 expanded their merchandise and moved to Place de la Bourse.
In the Gazette de France of December 28, 1811 (p.2 and 3), we find this account: "Susse's paper store was never empty. I slipped into the crowd, made up largely of young people who had come to buy satin-finished, embossed and gilded visiting cards, where the art of the engraver strives to highlight so many names devolved to obscurity: a few provincials bought colored paper with vignettes, which the petit-maîtres of the départements still consume in great numbers. In their place, I'd rather wear these pretty double-surprise screens, whose transparencies, skilfully arranged, offer effects of moon, snow and setting sun, the latest representing a scene from the opera La Vestale".
And in an article devoted to "Éventails d'autrefois", published in L'Avenir de Paris on January 31, 1923 (p. 3): "The Restoration [...] also invented the mechanical screen, the humble ancestor of cinema [...]. The famous paper manufacturer Susse had made a specialty of translucent screens. In the center of the cardboard was an opening where two engravings on thin paper, watercolored in bright colors, were glued back to back. If you looked at the screen against the light, you could only see half the scene. When the screen was brought close to the fireplace, the glow of the flame revealed the whole picture, the colors shone and the subject came to life".
A small wooden knob on the reverse allows a series of figures to scroll on and under a footbridge, visible by transparency.
Cardboard and tracing paper screen, engraved and painted. Canvas on reverse.
Turned wooden handle
Good general and functional condition (tears to front tracing paper and on paper back near the knob).
H : 39 cm
A very rare example of this type of screen, with a beautiful mise en abyme (a screen from the paper manufacturer Susse presenting the screens for sale, and even one sold to a lady from behind).
Nicolas Susse, who had trained as an engraver, joined forces with André Schrantz, a "technical artist", to manufacture "fancy embossed stationery". In 1804, together with the younger brother Michel-Victor Susse (a paper maker also), they opened a store at 7, passage des Panoramas to market this luxury stationery. Success came quickly. They enlarged their store by renting number 8 of the passage, and in 1836 expanded their merchandise and moved to Place de la Bourse.
In the Gazette de France of December 28, 1811 (p.2 and 3), we find this account: "Susse's paper store was never empty. I slipped into the crowd, made up largely of young people who had come to buy satin-finished, embossed and gilded visiting cards, where the art of the engraver strives to highlight so many names devolved to obscurity: a few provincials bought colored paper with vignettes, which the petit-maîtres of the départements still consume in great numbers. In their place, I'd rather wear these pretty double-surprise screens, whose transparencies, skilfully arranged, offer effects of moon, snow and setting sun, the latest representing a scene from the opera La Vestale".
And in an article devoted to "Éventails d'autrefois", published in L'Avenir de Paris on January 31, 1923 (p. 3): "The Restoration [...] also invented the mechanical screen, the humble ancestor of cinema [...]. The famous paper manufacturer Susse had made a specialty of translucent screens. In the center of the cardboard was an opening where two engravings on thin paper, watercolored in bright colors, were glued back to back. If you looked at the screen against the light, you could only see half the scene. When the screen was brought close to the fireplace, the glow of the flame revealed the whole picture, the colors shone and the subject came to life".
