Briquets-Automatiques (Automatic Lighters)

This engraved plate from a luxury fashion and design journal showcases six decorative automatic lighters—fashionable accessories of the Jazz Age. The compositions reveal art deco ornament and geometric patterning alongside figural designs: a turbaned woman in an ornate oval frame (Fig. 1), a playing card-suited gentleman (Fig. 5), stylized flame motifs (Fig. 3), and architectural forms. The wood engraving technique, with its fine line work and tonal contrasts, documents how commercial objects became subjects of aesthetic display in periodicals aimed at wealthy consumers. This page exemplifies the tradition of ornamental printmaking descending from 18th-century caricature and pattern books—where satire yielded to pure design documentation, and the satiric tradition evolved into modern advertising and industrial art illustration.