Vintage Calendars by Mauzan

 

Lucien Achille Mauzan is by far best known today as a poster artist. Every postcard artist has the potential to create all kinds of ephemera, including cards and calendars. Mauzan was no exception. We don't know how many calendars he designed during his career. We also can't find which images were created specifically for calendars and which were 'recycled' projects. Our mission in this post is to provide you with a basic view of his calendars with a few examples. We'll add more when we get additional info.


Calendar Sketches


The next four sketches panned out during one of many auctions of Mauzan's works. There are four sketches, all unfinished, but the motifs are clearly visible. We can also see the design for the days of the specific months as the artist planned. Each of the sketches covers three months:

  • the first for January, February, and March
  • the second for April, May, and June
  • the third for July, August, and September
  • the fourth for October, November, and December

All of the presented sketches have some blank space, which may be used for an addition of the company logo or info (e. g. the year). Of course, the images of classy ladies dominate the design.


A Perpetual Calendar


The perpetual design is constructed of two parts. The first one has an aesthetic goal. It makes your wall prettier. There are four windows in the picture. Behind that window comes the second, the practical part of the calendar. This part is made of four pieces of paper. The left one (when looking into the picture) presents the name of the day, and the right one the name of the month. In the middle, there are two numbers for the date. This way, the owner can move the pieces of paper behind the image and make the calendar accurate.

As we can see, the perpetual calendar was created for Penna Aurora, a company that made pencils. This way, the company tried to strengthen its presence in people's homes. Today, such a calendar makes lovely memorabilia of old times. But it's still accurate if you are willing to deal with the backstage papers!


Classic Calendar by Lucien Achille Mauzan


The next (and last) example of Mauzan's calendars is the closest to the classic calendar design we are still used to. Twelve pages for twelve months, twelve ladies in situations tuned to the specific months. We have images only, which is all right because these images were printed separately and glued to larger sheets with dates (and possibly logos of companies, which mostly used such calendars as business gifts or presents to their customers).

Mauzan was a very versatile artist, but on the other hand, he loved to portray ladies, and he used their images on every possible occasion, including calendars. This particular series is called Months of the Year and was originally made for the Italian market. As we already said, we will probably add more of his designs if we find any. Finally, we want to thank our contributor, MyCalendarLand.


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