Eugene Grasset's The Fair Gardener Calendar
In 1894, the Swiss designer Eugène Grasset created a calendar for the department store La Belle Jardiniere, using a new form of color printing, Chromotypography, an early form of photolithography, which was invented by one of his friends, Firmin Gillot. A masterpiece of Belle Epoque symbolist design, the flowers depicted are both seasonal and symbolic, and the women's dresses bear the zodiac sign for that month as part of its decorative pattern. Originally the designs had space for calendrical motifs and advertising copies. We have commissioned an overpainting for each illustration to make an uninterrupted design. The cover is a modified form of cover for the store's catalog, again with the copy removed.
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