Catalog Archive
Auction 178, Lot 329

"Plan de Paris",

Subject: Paris, France

Period: 1927 (dated)

Publication:

Color: Printed Color

Size:
36 x 27.5 inches
91.4 x 69.9 cm
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This pictorial map was published nearly a decade after World War I to encourage tourists to return to Paris. Although reminiscent of the style of MacDonald Gill's whimsical map, Wonderground (1914), this map portrays a sophisticated city with gilt streets, presented behind lush red curtains with putti holding aloft the banner title. The map was drawn by Ilonka Karasz, a Hungarian-born artist and designer who immigrated to New York City in 1913 and became known for her avant-garde work and for her numerous New Yorker magazine covers. A resident of Greenwich Village, Karasz created the map for the Washington Square Book Shop, a center of culture in Greenwich Village that was run by the literary power couple Chase and Josephine Horton.

The bird's-eye plan is centered on the Louvre and the Seine River and extends to Montmartre in the north, Boulevard Jourdan in the south, and the suburbs of Nanterre in the west and Vincennes in the east. The streets are meticulously named and important buildings and monuments are depicted in three dimensions. In the bottom left corner is an inset with a view of the Palace of Versailles. The bottom and side borders feature lovely vignettes interspersed with an index of the locations of monuments, museums, churches, depots, art galleries, banks, bars, theaters, hotels, restaurants, shops, cabarets and other points of interest on the map. A superb and uncommon map.

References: Rumsey #8091.

Condition: A

Superb printed color, heightened with gold, issued folding and now flattened and professionally backed with thin, archival tissue.

Estimate: $500 - $650

Sold for: $375

Closed on 6/10/2020

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