Glouglou: le Petit Poisson de Corail. Texte et dessins de Jean Bernard.

FULL DESCRIPTION: Stetten-Bernard Fishing

(36.5 x 26 cm). 21 leaves with 58 mounted items. Contemporary cloth spine over plain thick cardboard covers, front cover featuring a full color artwork serving as the title page. Laid in are two unsigned works in gouache: a wooded landscape, a wine bottle.

The artist’s talent for page design and careful handwork displayed in this album were assets when fabricating identity papers for the French Resistance.
A unique art-portfolio displaying the advertising artwork and ephemera of the designer Jean Stetten-Bernard, including printed brochures, leaflets, magazine advertisements, and dust-jacket designs as well as black-and-white production paste-ups and original designs—all related to fishing. The album, likely compiled by Stetten-Bernard himself, presents the artist’s work both before and after World War 2.

Stetten-Bernard, a Frenchman, was mobilized in 1939, taken prison in 1940, but then escaped and made his way to Lyon where he began working for the French Resistance as a document forger under the code name “Articles de Pêche [Fishing Gear].” Stetten-Bernard’s work is laid-out in a carefully manner, with ephemera and original art work pasted in. There are advertisements and artwork for fishing rods and reels, lures, tackle boxes, fishing line, fish nets, logos for manufacturers, and book jackets. These pieces include 16-page catalogue for Pezon & Michel's bamboo fly rod, the Parabolic, an 8-page pamphlet for their Luxor-Supréme reel, and two book jackets: Maurice Constantin-Weyer's Le Moulinet a Tambour Fixe (1937) and Nadaud & Driancourt's De La Pêche au Coup au Lancer Léger (1947). Additionally, there is a hand-painted color logo for Luxor fishing line, a hand-painted brochure with pasted-in text for Pezon & Michel's Luxor fly rods, ink-drawn logos for “Plymouth”, and other paste-ups, and ink originals.