Between the Street and the Salon: Parisian Shop Signs and the Spaces of Professionalism in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries

Abstract

I. The literature on Parisian signs is large and fragmentary, flourishing in the later nineteenth and early twentieth century at the period when most of them had disappeared. There are two main strains, the erudite (best represented by Edouard Fournier's Histoire des enseignes de Paris, revue et publie par le Bibliophile Jacob (Paris, 1884) and the nostalgic/touristic, exemplified by Charles Fegdal's Les Vieiles Enseignes de Pais, Collection du 'Paris pittoresque', avec les dessins d'Andre Warnod (Paris, 1913), which includes walking itineraries. Amongst modern studies, the most well-researched is David Garrioch's 'House names, shop signs and social organization in Western European cities, 15001900', Urban History, vol. 21, part 1, April 1994, pp. 20-48. See also Hier pour demain (Grand Palais: Paris, 1980), pp. 217-21; Daniel Roche, The People of Paris (Berg: Leamington Spa, 1987), pp. 224-8; and G. Gomoy y Caceres and M.A. de Pierredon, Les decors des boutiques parisiennes (Paris, 1991). There are many possible ways of attempting to write histories of signs within the history of Paris (itself a complex and contested topic); as part of the evolution of the architecture and iconography of commerce; and as a feature of Parisian popular culture. This study will focus on the problematic status of signs as art, and explore the ways in which this has changed according to the needs of different polemical perceptions. In order to clarify the nature of the claims made for or against them, we will need to note certain aspects of the changing appearance and character of signs. What follows does not, however, try to establish a comprehensive history of the signs themselves, but rather to attend to those moments when signs become a matter of dispute or partisan celebration.'