March 28, 1907 · Compagnie Générale Transatlantique · Dinner
The cathedral at Reims, in northeastern France, was the historic coronation site of French kings. By 1907 it was already on every Grand Tour itinerary. (The cathedral would suffer severe bombardment in World War I, making pre-war images of its intact gothic façade historically poignant.)
The cover combines a black-and-white engraving of the cathedral with an Art Nouveau frame in turquoise and gold. The lower text references the perfume “La Corrida” by Ed. Pinaud, the Paris commercial printer who held the CGT menu contract for over a decade. The frame’s decorative motifs — stylised water lilies and abstract scrolls — are pure French Art Nouveau of the 1900–1910 period.
CGT’s menu programme in the 1907–1914 period was unusual among ocean lines: rather than ship portraits, the company commissioned a series of menu covers featuring famous French sites — cathedrals, châteaux, regional landscapes. Each menu thus doubled as a small piece of French cultural propaganda for an American clientele.
Visual style: Art Nouveau cover featuring an engraving of Reims Cathedral within a turquoise frame.
What you receive
- Three print sizes: 8×10, 11×14, 16×20 inches (300 DPI, ready for any home printer or framing shop).
- Two versions of each size: a pure print (no added text) and a museum print (with a small caption: restaurant or ship, year, and source).
- A 1–2 page PDF with the menu’s historical context.
- One ZIP file, instantly downloadable after checkout.
About the source
This menu is preserved in the Buttolph Collection of Menus at The New York Public Library and is in the public domain in the United States. The Menu Press has curated, digitally restored, and reformatted the work for modern printing.
