Fashion Shop with Fashion Plates and a Paddle Steamer, Hand Colored Print, 1842

This original antique lithograph, hand colored, comes from the Galleria Universale di Tutti i Popoli del Mondo (Venice, Giuseppe Antonelli, 1842). The upper image is the interior of a fashion shop. Behind a wooden counter the shopkeeper, in a dark coat and cap, holds up a framed fashion plate to a lady in a full dark gray dress, white lace collar and bonnet, who leads a small girl in a red hood and white skirt. Bonnets stand on the counter, a glass lamp hangs from the ceiling, further fashion plates are pinned to a pillar at right, and a seated customer, a woman in blue and a man in a doorway fill the back of the room. The lower image shows a paddle steamer with a tall smoking funnel and sails set, crowded with passengers, running through choppy water past a long arcaded stone building, with other sailing boats in the distance.

The top margin is lettered "Tom. IV", "EUROPA" and "Tav. 3". The upper caption reads "Bottega di Mode con Figurini" (Fashion shop with fashion plates) and the lower "Barca a Vapore" (Steamboat).

The Italian figurino is a fashion plate, the hand colored print of the latest dress that milliners and dressmakers showed to their customers; the framed sheets in the shop are exactly that. The paddle steamer, driven by side wheels with sails kept as a reserve, was the new form of water transport of the period in which the book was published. The two scenes are grouped under the general heading for Europe rather than under a single country.

A plate that records modern life of the 1840s rather than traditional costume, it suits a dressing room, a study or a group of fashion prints.

This is an original antique print, not a modern reproduction. This item is sold unframed.