A Mid-20thC Plaster & Papier-Mâché Oversized Advertising Bottle for Mercier Champagne c.1953

Object Description

The oversized 1950s era plaster and papier-mâché advertising bottle designed to be displayed in a shop window to advertise a bottle of French 1953 vintage A.C. Epernay, Champagne; now nicely worn with age.

Object History

Unknown.

Object Literature

Maison Mercier, founded in 1858 by Eugène Mercier at the tender age of twenty, is one of the great Champagne names. Thanks to the drive of its visionary founder, Champagne Mercier has become a firm French favourite. Eugène Mercier strove against the odds to purvey Champagne of the highest quality to a wide public. Eugène Mercier had a stock answer for inevitable sceptics: “You can laugh, but the day will come when rivers of Champagne will flow through Epernay”. Some ten years later Eugène was proved right.

Mercier made fibreglass examples after these scarcer and earlier plaster and papier-mâché types. This particular bottle dates to around 1953.

Eugène Mercier was a ‘big’ man with life-size ideas that were also useful for publicity; this proves it and is a whole lot of fun and, of course, this particular bottle doesn’t run out.

Object Condition

The bottle is in fair condition considering it is of papier-mâché and plaster and over half a century old, though it does have expected chipping to most areas and it proves wonderfully decorative in this condition.

Object Details