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Title: The Best of Fertilizers! |
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Description: The text above the hovering balloon in this poster proudly proclaims that Constanti & de Korbuth fertilizer is “the best of fertilizers!” Text on the balloon elaborates, explaining that the fertilizer in question consists of sulfurized cow manure. Ostensibly the farmers working below, spread the advertised manure onto their verdant fields. The poster suggests that the moment the fertilizer so much as touches the ground, crops spring from the soil. The boy holding the sign labeled “Marseille” in the lower right-hand corner tells the viewer that the company is headquartered in the southern French port city of Marseille. This poster shows the breadth of the industrial revolution. Developments in the field of chemistry affected everything from transportation to agriculture. The first flight of a gas balloon was a French endeavor. On August 27, 1783, Joseph and Etienne Montgolfier flew a balloon of their own design over Paris. The balloon in the poster appears to be a Montgolfier-like vehicle, utilizing heat and air (or hydrogen) to lift aloft a large inflatable envelope with a passenger compartment (the gondola) attached at the base. |
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Founded in 1898, the same year of this poster’s publication, the Aéro-Club de France, the preeminent French flying club of its day, drawing many balloonists, most of whom were quite stylish and well-to-do, given ballooning’s appeal to the leisure class. Likewise, from the mid-1800s to 1898, French agriculture experienced great changes. By the end of the 19th century, manufactured fertilizers had increasingly supplanted organic sources, such as animal waste products, on which farmers had previously relied to nourish their fields. Constanti and Korbuth’s sulfide cakes arrived in neat bags and at least suggested by the poster, farmers stayed neat and clean while applying the seemingly magical fertilizer on their fields. Balloons had first been used as billboards in 1863 in France, by Gaspard Tournachon, a.k.a “Nadar,” who gave out printed advertisements for his ballooning and photography businesses from a balloon. Later, advertising would be printed directly onto the balloon itself. Although ballooning ascensions (trips up in a balloon) as a popular fascination had begun waning by the turn of the century, at the time of this poster’s printing, clearly the poster intends to connect technological achievement in one field, ballooning, with that in another field, fertilizer production. This is no ordinary fertilizer, suggests the poster; it is an exciting, useful, and modern product, just like the balloon. Posters such as this advertisement tried to seize the viewer’s attention through their imagery and colors, made possible by the advent of lithographic printing. Whether in the burgeoning cities or in the still very populated countryside, businesses needed to attract customers, and use of new technologies, whether in printing or in aviation, added attractive, new means to achieve that end. |
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