Bibliography
François Rappo, «La typographie d’Eugène Grasset», in Catherine Lepdor (dir.), Eugène Grasset. L’art et l’ornement, cat. exp. Lausanne, Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Milan, 5 Continents Editions, 2011, p. 159-167.
Anne Murray-Robertson, Grasset pionnier de l’Art nouveau, Lausanne, Éditions 24Heures et Bibliothèque des Arts, 1981.
The 1880s saw Eugène Grasset begin a prolific output of ornate lettering, headers, typographic ornaments, and binding stamps. His partnership with Larousse, a publisher specialising in dictionaries and encyclopaedias, proved particularly fruitful.
This design is certainly Grasset’s most famous and iconic work in this arena. The emblem featured on almost all of Larousse’s titles from 1890 to 1952. It was inspired by a dandelion clock design by Émile Reiber for the first volume of the Albums Reiber, a collection of drawing manuals, published in 1877. Reiber’s design showed a single dandelion with Larousse’s motto, “Je sème à tout vent” (I scatter my seed to the four winds). Grasset added a young woman in profile, hand on heart, wrapped in a shawl, locks fluttering in the breeze. She is blowing on a dandelion, symbolizing the dissemination of knowledge. The capital L for Larousse interrupts the circle around the composition, with the words of the motto inscribed around the outer edge.
Seven years after his initial emblem, Grasset designed this new, more classical take on the same theme for the frontispiece of an illustrated dictionary, the Nouveau Larousse illustré. The woman is bare-breasted and wears a laurel wreath. Her pursed red lips are blowing on the dandelion clock, the seeds floating against a backdrop of magnificently stylized clouds. The dictionary’s table of contents was printed in the font Fantaisie Artistique, sold by the type foundry G. Peignot & Fils. The same year, the foundry commissioned Grasset to design an entirely new typeface, which bears his name. He produced thirteen different variants of Grasset roman and italic lettering between 1897 and 1900, along with a series of typographic ornaments.