One Book
Inventory number: 6093
Title: Le Service du Repas Communal. Hommage de Reconnaissance à M. Le Notaire Bauwens, Conseiller-Délégué
Publication date: 1918-1919
Price: $4,500
Description: A presentation album of 19 striking gelatin silver prints each measuring 6½ x 9 inches (165 x 229 mm.), or the reverse, documenting food preparation and distribution by the Brussels communal kitchens during and after World War I. Also included is a splendid pouchoir print, with manuscript dedication, by the artist H. Herssens; it is signed in ink by thirteen officials of the relief effort. There are also three pages of mounted ephemera including a menu (designed by Herssens), meal tickets, and a profit and loss statement for September 1918–March 1919. Oblong quarto 9¾ x 13 inches (248 x 330 mm.). Half brown morocco with raised bands and title in gilt; binding rubbed.
The beautifully composed photographs by an anonymous photographer show the cooking of meals by uniformed cooks in large tiled kitchens with grand stoves, huge vats on gigantic pulleys, and marble topped tables, as well as the packaging of food in metal cans and baskets and the meal deliveries by hand carts and horse drawn wagons.
This presentation album for M. Bauwens, a legal advisor and municipal magistrate instrumental in running the Brussels food relief programs, appears to celebrate the final meal—a grand banquet in effect—prepared by the communal kitchens. The splendid chromolithographed menu dated March 31, 1919 at the rear of this album congratulates the allies and lists “Potage Wilson, Lapin Soulé à la Francaise, Pommes à l’Anglaise and Torte Italienne.” The profit and loss statement suggests that the kitchens had successfully completed their mission.
A powerful document on the communal efforts of war relief in Belgium.