Francisco Tamagno: Chamonix Ski Jumpers, 1900 – Porcelain Art Mug

A couple caught mid-jump, suspended above a snow slope in the posture of early ski jumping. The technique and the equipment of 1900 required a particular kind of courage: bindings were primitive and protective clothing nearly non-existent. Winter sport as exhilarating modernity, the mountain as playground rather than obstacle, the couple in flight as an emblem of the new century's optimism about what a body could do.

The image is the picture field of a chromolithographic poster, Chamonix — Mont-Blanc, signed Tamagno at the lower left and printed by Imp. Émile Pécaud & Cie in Paris. It was made for the P.L.M., the Paris–Lyon–Méditerranée railway — and this edition is in English. It announces International Contests of Skis, Bobsleighs, Tobogans, the Mt Blanc Challenge Cup and International Skating Competitions, promises express trains with through carriages, and directs enquiries to the P.L.M. company's offices at 179–180 Piccadilly, London, or to the syndicate at Chamonix. The sheet was printed to sell the Alps to British travellers, and it says so in every line.

Francisco Nicolas Tamagno (1851–1933) was an Italian-born graphic artist who worked principally in France. His poster belongs to the golden age of French chromolithography, when the medium was being pushed to its limits of colour and graphic invention by artists including Mucha, Chéret and Toulouse-Lautrec. The mug carries the picture field alone, without the lettering; the fourth product image shows the whole sheet with the printed part marked, so the crop is visible for what it is.

Fine porcelain, 10 oz — 104 mm high, 75 mm across the base. The image runs around the body; handle and rim stay white. Dishwasher and microwave safe.

Francisco Nicolas Tamagno, detail from Chamonix — Mont-Blanc, chromolithographic poster for the P.L.M., printed by Imp. Émile Pécaud & Cie, Paris. Public domain. The complete sheet reproduced in the gallery is the copy in the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya, Barcelona — colour lithograph, 99.2 × 61.2 cm, inv. 000416-C, gift of Joan Vidal Ventosa, 1927 — which the museum dates c. 1900–1910 and publishes as public domain.

Selected by Dr. Walther Fuchs for the Tazzarte collection.