Savonnerie de Bagnolet

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Savonnerie de Bagnolet by Alphonse Mucha

A woman's profile fills a circle of ornament while large curved words advertise Savonnerie de Bagnolet and Alfred Schweizer. Small grids of dates sit at the bottom of the local image. Bridgeman Images catalogues a photographed private-collection page with this Mucha design as an 1898 advertising calendar.^[1] The local file shows the same commercial composition, but the photograph's measured sheet is a separate object; the JPEG itself has no established physical size or printing technique.

At a Glance

• Date1898 calendar issue^[1]
• ClientSavonnerie de Bagnolet / Alfred Schweizer; successor listed in 1900^[3]
• Formprinted advertising calendar page^[1]
• Local imagereproduction; exact physical sheet unverified

Contents

1. A profile for a soap company
2. The maker behind the name
3. The documented 1898 calendar
4. Looking again

A profile for a soap company

The head faces left, making a strong silhouette against a patterned disc. Elaborate ornaments in the hair and long strands flowing to the right fill much of the sheet. The company name bends around the upper edge, joining the figure's curve instead of sitting in a separate rectangular label. The design turns a utilitarian soap advertisement into a memorable image without hiding what it sells.

Other wording names the special manufacture of toilet soaps. That phrase is more specific than a generic brand slogan: it tells a prospective customer what the factory made. The portrait and text have different jobs: the figure catches attention, while the letters identify the company and its product. The calendar format could keep that name in view whenever someone consulted the dates.

The narrow date grids at the bottom change the object's function. The sheet was designed for consultation through the year, repeatedly bringing the company's name into a reader's ordinary routine. In this respect the calendar is a lasting advertisement as well as an ornate print. Its date grids are part of the commercial design, not an incidental later label.

The maker behind the name

An official catalogue for the 1900 Paris Exposition lists the Société anonyme de la Savonnerie Parisienne at Bagnolet in the perfume class. Its entry calls the business the former A. Schweizer establishments and lists toilet soaps, soap creams and powders.^[3] This later document gives substance to the words on the 1898 calendar: the advertisement promoted a soapmaking concern that was still identifiable at Bagnolet when the exposition catalogue was compiled. The business's name and legal form had changed by 1900, but the entry does not tell us when that happened. It would be misleading to assign the successor company's name to the earlier calendar itself.

The same 1900 entry gives the joint-stock company's capital as one million francs and records membership of the jury at the 1889 Paris Exposition.^[3] Jury service is a credential, not a prize; the catalogue does not award the business a medal. Nor does the later capital figure establish the size of Schweizer's enterprise when Mucha designed the advertisement. These distinctions matter because the calendar's short advertising lines invite an easy but unsupported leap from commercial prestige to a specific award or production history.

A Bagnolet local-history account, quoting earlier work on the town's Château de l'Étang, locates the Schweizer soapworks at 140 Grande Rue and says the estate's pond supplied it with water for several years.^[5] This places the advertised name in an actual industrial landscape rather than treating “Bagnolet” as decorative wording. The account does not date that water arrangement to 1898, identify the calendar's printer or show the factory in the calendar. It gives context for the business named on the sheet, while the official exposition entry provides the firmer evidence for its product line and later corporate identity.^[3]

The documented 1898 calendar

Bridgeman Images describes its private-collection photograph as an 1898 calendar page carrying Mucha's advertising design for Savonnerie de Bagnolet, Alfred Schweizer.^[1] That source records a physical sheet measuring 37 × 51.5 centimetres, photographed by Luisa Ricciarini. Those measurements belong to the catalogued sheet. The page uses the 1898 calendar identification without assigning its physical specifications to every surviving or reproduced example.

A 1897 design date circulates in later lists. It could describe preparation for the following year's calendar, but the private-collection record does not itself establish that earlier date. A present-day French reproduction seller also describes a Schweizer calendar as 1897 while giving a different portrait subject.^[4] Its listing cannot settle the date of Mucha's profile design. The year in this article's title is the documented calendar year, not a claim that Mucha first drew the figure during 1898.

A second Bridgeman listing complicates the chronology further: asset FIA11988044 is titled Savonnerie de Bagnolet, 1907 and catalogued as a colour lithograph in a private collection.^[6] It is a different catalogue entry from the photographed 1898 calendar page, with a different source credit and no description of a calendar or a measured sheet. The shared advertiser and artist names do not establish whether the two records describe separate compositions, later printing, or a mistaken date. Until an object-level record connects them, the 1907 label cannot redate this page's documented 1898 calendar, and its medium cannot be assigned to the local reproduction.

The Library of Congress also holds Mucha-designed labels for Savon Mucha violet and heliotrope soaps dated 1907.^[7] Those labels show that soap advertising reappeared in his work, but their named product is different from the Savonnerie de Bagnolet calendar. They cannot corroborate Bridgeman's separate 1907 Bagnolet listing or imply a continuing commission from Schweizer's company. The distinction matters when searching by artist and product category: a result for “Mucha soap” is not necessarily evidence about this specific advertiser, calendar or printing state.

The calendar record does not identify a printer or establish a complete run of issues.^[1] Nor can the presence of a printed grid alone prove a specific lithographic process. The fact box therefore names the work's form—printed advertising calendar page—without supplying an unsupported technique.

Mucha's commercial designs often blended imagery and lettering, but this one adds a clear time-keeping purpose. The profile offers a focal point, the arched words give the maker's identity, and the dates invite return visits. The 1900 catalogue supplies an unusually useful check on the advertiser's identity: it connects the prominent Alfred Schweizer name to a documented soap and perfume-class business without pretending to date the calendar's printing more precisely.^[3]

Looking again

Read the top lines, follow the hair around the circle and finally find the calendar grids. The sheet's elegance does not erase its practical use. Its strongest source-backed identity is the 1898 Savonnerie de Bagnolet advertising calendar for the predecessor of a business listed at the 1900 Paris Exposition. Its printer and exact printing state remain open.^[1][3]

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Frequently Asked Questions

References

1. Bridgeman Images, asset LRI4619709, photograph by Luisa Ricciarini of a private-collection 1898 Savonnerie de Bagnolet calendar page. Catalogue.
2. Mucha Foundation, Browse Works, Mucha's commercial design corpus. Browse.
3. Exposition internationale universelle de 1900, Catalogue général officiel, vol. 16, group XIV, class 90, p. 18, no. 80, digitised by Conservatoire numérique des Arts et Métiers. Catalogue text.
4. Cadeau Souvenir, modern reproduction listing for a different 1897 Schweizer calendar portrait; useful only as a record of date ambiguity, not an attribution to Mucha's profile. Listing.
5. Bagnolet en Vert, local-history account of the Château de l'Étang, citing earlier Bagnolet history for the Schweizer soapworks and its water supply. Article.
6. Bridgeman Images / Fine Art Images, separate private-collection listing FIA11988044, titled Savonnerie de Bagnolet, 1907, with colour-lithograph medium but no sheet dimensions or calendar description. Catalogue.
7. Library of Congress, “The Magic of Mucha” (2026), identifying distinct 1907 Savon Mucha violet and heliotrope soap labels in its Prints and Photographs Division. Collection feature.

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