Automoto 1914 Poster — Fabriqués de Toutes Pièces dans leurs Usines de St Étienne

— Poster —
CYCLES
AUTOMOTO

FABRIQUÉS DE TOUTES PIÈCES
DANS LEURS USINES DE St ÉTIENNE

IMP. F. CHAMPENOIS. PARIS

Struck on the sheet at the lower right in blue ink:

DÉPÔT LÉGAL
Seine
N° 460
1914

Struck beside it in red, the collection stamp of the holding library:

BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE
R. F.
EST.

Read in mirror at the upper right, where the back of the sheet shows through, the printer’s own
docket in violet ink over his stamp. The first line does not resolve with certainty; the rest is
clear.

Affiches Lettres
Vue d’Usine
Tirage 15.000

F. CHAMPENOIS
Imprimerie
PARIS

[A four-leaf clover in flat green fills the upper half of the sheet with CYCLES reversed out of it
in white, and AUTOMOTO is set straight across the whole width in red capitals a meter tall. Below
the lettering a framed vignette shows the works from the air, printed in red and near-black: long
saw-tooth workshops set around a courtyard, two tall chimneys smoking, the roofs of Saint-Étienne
running away to the horizon behind. A heavy red ribbon sweeps in from each side of the sheet and
ends in an arrowhead pointing into that frame. FABRIQUÉS stands at the left of the vignette, DE
TOUTES PIÈCES at the right, and DANS LEURS USINES DE St ÉTIENNE runs across the foot in green.

There is no rider on this poster, no machine and no race. There is a clover, a name and a
photograph of a factory, and two arrows telling the reader where to look. The claim is
manufacture: every part of an Automoto is made in Automoto’s own works, and here they are.

The archive already holds the same argument made a different way. On the c.1900 sheet by A.
Parent, document 69469, the six Saint-Étienne works are drawn one at a time and named one at a
time. Fourteen years later the argument has been compressed into a single aerial view and two
red arrows, and the sheet has been printed at 115 by 150 centimeters to carry it.

The year is not an estimate. The dépôt légal stamp in the lower right corner reads 1914, which is
the date the sheet was deposited with the authorities of the Seine, and the printer’s docket on
the reverse records a print run of fifteen thousand copies.]