Tag Archives: Cooper Hewitt

Today I discovered two wonderful small cards at an antique book and ephemera show held just a few blocks from where I live.

This may not sound like a big deal – unless you are a collector. These were very special cards.

One was old and rare, the other more recent but by a favorite designer.

The older one, shown above, was for club called Sans Souci which held a dinner at Delmonico’s on 5th Avenue and 14th Street. The date of a dinner was just a few years after the Delmonico brothers opened at that location, which was destined to become their most fashionable one.

About the Sans Souci Club, I know nothing. But I did find out that there were many, many clubs with that name all over the United States in the 19th century. It’s possible that it might have been the one in Brooklyn about the time of this dinner. It was an amateur drama club which fits with the theme of the card.

As rare as the Sans Souci card may be, my favorite find was the newer card, probably from about 1986, designed for the Restaurant Florent by Tibor Kalman. He cleverly used simple, familiar symbols found in the Yellow Pages (except maybe for the gun?). It is printed on what has been described as shirt cardboard with flecks in it. He used similar cardboard for the restaurant’s matches.

Kalman’s card was designed while he was working with M&Co. which he founded along with others. It is in the collection of the Cooper Hewitt museum with other work of his done at M&Co., including quite a number of items for Restaurant Florent.