POSTER STAMPS AND LABELS OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES

Vignettes of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris

Paris: Then and Now
(Click and then zoom on these, especially "Then." Amazing detail - the Eiffel Tower was bright yellow!)

I was prompted to create this exhibit as part of my online catalog of Olympic seals, labels, vignettes, poster stamps, reklamemarken, werbemarken, and Cinderellas by the persistent claims of various people that the labels of the 1900 Exposition Universelle in Paris are "Olympic labels." They are not. None of them mentions those Games, or depicts anything about sports. They were created for the Exposition itself, to which the Games were a weird sideshow.

But, many of them are quite beautiful, and there are so MANY! One source I consulted says there are 64 different sets, with a total of 1,484 different stamps. That is probably low. The real total may be a record for any event. Poster stamps were at the peak of their popularity and everyone had to get onto that bandwagon.

Below is my humble display of just a few of these. If you want to see a lot more, buy a copy of Charles Kiddles' excellent catalog - "The Paris Universal Exposition 1900 : the poster stamps - vignettes." You can reach him by email - charleskiddle@btconnect.com.
(Thanks to Italian collector Alvaro Trucchi for his contributions to this page.)

AND if you want to see the REAL Olympic seals and labels, click on any of the links to right and left.

Enjoy!

OFFICIAL LABELS

The labels most collectors have seen many times are these "official" ones that show the national pavilions and chief attractions of the Expo. I don't know how many designs there were, but there were 43 nations and 25 colonies participating, so there could be that many, right? Plus the ones for special pavilions, at least another dozen more. Which adds up to 80. I think there are 40 or so in these images.

There are two major varieties of these -
- generic ones that name no product or exhibit, only the medal awarded;
- ones that name the product, added to an existing design;

These are ads for specific products that mention the expo and the award won there. Some may have been issued after the Expo ended, but production of such labels was a big industry at the time, and turnaround of a few days for production was not unusual.

Stamp collecting was already a major hobby in 1900, though the first stamp worldwide, the Penny Black of Great Britain, had been issued only 60 years earlier, in 1840. The first major International Philatelic Exhibition was held in Vienna, in 1881.

OLD PARIS was one of the major exhibitions, with nostalgic scenes recalling The Good Old Days 🙂

PALAIS DU COSTUME

One of the major pavilions was devoted to Costume - Paris has long been a symbol of high fashion, and this pavilion showed both the history of costume and the place of France in advancing it.

LE VILLAGE SUISSE

The Swiss Village was a recreation of an idealized Swiss mountain village, complete with yodelers and hot chocolate.

WHO DOES NOT HAVE A TICKET?

I discovered this label only recently - obviously it's part of the publicity for the expo, though France had been in a fever over it for several years by the time it started, and no one could miss the preparations, including a coat of bright YELLOW paint on the Eiffel Tower! So who needed to be reminded?

The label reproduces the designs of the official set, above, with the message added at the top. I do not know if it was issued with all the designs. The only multiples I have seen are shown here.

This spectacular sheetlet is my favorite of all the 1900 Expo vignettes. Can you imagine a more beautiful example of Art Nouveau extravagance? Click on the image below, and zoom in to see all the details.

Like everything else associated with the Expo, the tickets were works of art.