Art & Statues
L'Illustration, Complete Year 1934, Six Bound Volumes
L'Illustration, Complete Year 1934, Six Bound Volumes
A complete run of the French weekly L'Illustration for the year 1934, bound into six hardcover volumes covering every two month period from January through December. By 1934, L'Illustration was well established as one of France's leading illustrated news magazines, covering art, fashion, architecture, and current events during the later years of the Art Deco period. These volumes are former Pasadena Public Library copies, identified by the library stamps on the spines.
By the mid-1930s, L'Illustration had built a long track record of pairing serious journalism with extensive photography and illustration, making it one of the primary visual records of French cultural life between the wars. The year 1934 captures France navigating the effects of the global economic downturn alongside continued design innovation, and issues from this run reflect that mix through both editorial coverage and the advertising throughout each issue. For anyone researching French fashion, architecture, or graphic design in the years following the peak of high Art Deco, this run offers a detailed primary source.
Each volume gathers two months of weekly issues into a single bound book, following the same format libraries commonly used to preserve periodicals for long term reference. The six volumes here, numbered 187 through 189 with two parts each, run consecutively from January through December, giving a complete year of the publication in one set. The advertisements and society pages throughout provide their own record of period consumer goods, fashion houses, and the graphic conventions still carrying Art Deco's influence into the mid-1930s.
As former library volumes, these carry the Pasadena Public Library stamp on their spines, pointing to their institutional history and careful preservation over the decades. Complete bound year sets of L'Illustration from this period are increasingly difficult to find intact, since individual issues are more often sold separately for their illustrations or advertisements. This set gives collectors and researchers a full year in one place, useful as both a design reference and a document of French life in 1934.
