During my summer holidays in Normandy I attended a fleamarket in which I scored a leaflet for one Euro which I think was printed in the late 19th century.
The owner of a cycle shop in the South of France, Auguste Ramondou, advertises a large delivery of Svelte cycles which he recommends with the usual 1890s pomp to the public. It is mentioned that cycles Svelte are the best bicycles in the world, which must be very far fetched. But who, where and what is all of this?
First, checking on the net the name Ramondou seems to be relatively frequent in the Tarn and Tarn-et-Garonne Départements. The death register on the net does not show an Auguste though. The tiny village of Roquecor is in Tarn-et-Garonne (82) and and does not seem to hold a bicycle store today.
OTOH the Societé Manufacturière d´Armes et Cycles at Saint-Etienne is relatively well-known, and their Svelte Cycles seem to have been manufactured in large numbers. The bad quality illustration on the leaflet is one that is seen frequently in better quality on contemporary posters, like this one:
The primitive woodcut (?) in the leaflet is quite obviously a copy of the illustration above. Here we also see some more info: It seems that Cycles Svelte were used by the cyclists in the Garde Républicaine, an élite corps of the French army in existence to this day. My suggestion is that the motif was that well known to the public that it only took a bad, cheaply printed copy, like the leaflet, to evoke the emotions in the viewers that the seller and manufacturer wanted to evoke.
So, even if the fleamarket in Normandy did not show much more interesting stuff, this leaflet was worth going.
starostneradost 