St-Cergue – Hôtel de la Poste

This is one of those original posters on which the designer – whether requested by the client or not – bends the geographical conditions to suit the purposes of the advertised location; for example, there are surely many vantage points on the territory of the Vaudois Jura municipality of Saint-Cergue from which one has a view of Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc – but certainly not from the still existing Hôtel de la Poste, just as little today as then. Whether the hotel guests were bothered by this is not vouched for.
Either way, this is, firstly, such a rare poster that we do not know of a second copy, and, secondly, an outstanding example of Swiss Art Deco – although it should of course be mentioned that the creator, Noël Fontanet (1898-1982), worked for some time in Paris in the early 1920s, in other words at the source of Art Deco, where he also acquired the tools for his career as a commercial artist, which he launched after his return to Geneva.

Exact printing year unknown; probably in the second half of the 1920s, when Saint-Cergue was trying to attract new guests, especially winter sports enthusiasts, after its importance as a high-altitude health resort began to fade.