Gallia la Marque de la Qualité

Paris: Félix Boudou & Cie, 1935. Wraps. Very Good Plus. An especially handsome Art Deco French trade catalogue for a beauty salon (and barbershop) supply company. Carried are virtually all the products unique to such businesses, from small implements and beauty products, to furniture and fixtures, as well as such things as advertising signage. The business served virtually all the needs of such businesses that supplied beauty salons and barbershops. Besides the high Art Deco style of the catalogue throughout, there is also a fair amount of color and tinting to catch the eye. 4to. 27 by 21 cm. 171 pp. After the title page, which has an Art Deco vignette centerpiece, and the index, starting at page 6, almost every page has photos and a few drawn illustrations of products or people. Five sections begin with a color plate, not included in the pagination. These sections are for curling machinery and equipment, drying fixtures and equipment, seating (barber chairs), furniture for hair styling, manicures, pedicures, massages and other beauty procedures, and finally installations -- meaning the full set-up or decoration of the shop. There are three other sections, which don't have such plates. The only institutional copy to be found on OCLC, at the Hagley, also has only five plates, and there is no physical evidence of plates ever existing for these sections, so to the best of our knowledge, the catalogue is complete. These sections are for tools, hygiene, and advertising. We will note that there are things can straddle sections and so one can find signage, say, in two different parts of the catalogue. In addition to the color plates, there are a good number of pages with tinting in the background, and we note that throughout the catalogue much of the text is in a red color contrasting with b/w imagery. Highlights to the catalogue, to the idle browser, might be the barber chairs, the signage and other advertising, including diagonally striped barber poles, and the installation photos, which besides the eleven pictures in the dedicated section, includes illustrations here and there in other sections. But probably the most interesting aspect of the catalogue, outside of its aesthetics, is the parts that concern now obsolete or more obscure procedures and equipment for such things as marcel-ing and clunky drying apparatuses. The cover, of a mid-weight card, has some minor soiling. There are two closed tears by front spine fold, or "joint". Light and trivial occasional soil and wear within.