Household Goods – Zurich Food Association | St. Annahof

Swiss original poster Lebensmittel-Verein St. Annahof household goods Oesch 1914
Original Swiss poster Lebensmittel-Verein St. Annahof game meat Oesch 1914
Original Swiss poster St. Annahof Zurich shoes Sebastian Oesch 1914
Swiss Original Vintage Poster Oesch Zurich Food Association St. Annahof Vegetables Fruits 1914
Original poster Lebensmittel-Verein St. Annahof poultry Sebastian Oesch 1914
Swiss original poster Lebensmittel-Verein St. Annahof River & Sea Fish Sebastian Oesch 1914
Creator

Sebastian Oesch
Printing year

1914
Printing technique

Lithography
Printer

Polygraphic Institute, Zurich
Condition

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Original poster from a six-part series («Game», «Poultry», «Fish», etc.) designed in 1914 by Sebastian Oesch from St. Gallen for the opening of the St. Annahof department store run by the Lebensmittel-Verein Zürich on Bahnhofstrasse.

Its beginnings date back to 1877, when the cooperatively organized vegetable association was founded in Zurich. As women increasingly worked in factories due to advancing industrialization and no longer had time to grow vegetables for their own consumption, the association wanted to put a stop to middlemen and the associated price increases by buying directly from producers and then handling the fine distribution in the city. Just one year later, the vegetable association became the Zurich Food Association, which opened its first retail store in 1880 before eventually becoming a producer itself, supplying members with bread, meat, and coffee from its own operations, and even offering firewood, oil, and coal. Diversification reached a new peak in 1914 when household goods and shoes were also offered at the St. Annahof, built in a prime Zurich location.

In 1969, the Lebensmittel-Verein Zürich merged into Coop, with the St. Annahof still being arguably its most representative department store (just a few steps away from PLACART, by the way).

And Sebastian Oesch? Following an apprenticeship as an embroidery designer – back then, there were not many other options in Eastern Switzerland if one wanted to pursue an artistic career – he spent 1912/13 in Berlin and Weimar before working as a lithographer in Zurich. Because he soon set off for Algiers and then Paris (where Amedeo Modigliani drew him), he had hardly any time to design more than – as far as I know, at least – a single additional poster. Following his return in 1916 for health reasons, he moved to Appenzell, where he dedicated himself to the landscape and the people; in 1920, at not even 27 years of age, he died of the (Spanish) flu.

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