Strasbourg-Chamonix 1926

By 1926 Roger Broders was pushing his Art Deco style to bolder, more graphic extremes, and his Strasbourg-Chamonix poster is a striking case in point. Designed to mark a new joint railway venture linking two very different corners of France, it turns a route map into a celebration of regional character.

Rather than depict landscapes, Broders reduces the idea to two figures. Two strikingly geometric, stylised women stand for the regions now united by the new line, each wearing a costume distinctive to her homeland, one from Strasbourg and one from Chamonix. Rendered in his increasingly confident Deco vocabulary, they embody both proud regional identity and the modern promise of connection, tradition and progress meeting in a single elegant image. It is a poster about togetherness, told through pure design, and it shows how far Broders was willing to abstract the human figure in the name of style.

Roger Broders (1883-1953) was a leading French Art Deco poster designer whose luminous railway images lured a generation toward the Alps, the Jura and the sun-drenched Riviera. His flat planes of saturated colour and elegant simplification made him one of the most collectable names of the golden age of rail, and here that gift for stylisation reaches an almost sculptural boldness.

Art Deco, the movement behind the poster, emerged in 1920s France as a celebration of speed, luxury and machine-age geometry. Its designers pared complex ideas down to bold, stylised colour and confident form, and Broders's two costumed figures are a perfect expression of that ethos, ornamental yet crisp, decorative yet thoroughly modern.

Displayed large, the poster becomes a graphic focal point, its symmetry and strong colour giving a room a sense of style and balance. It looks handsome above a sofa, console or bed, anchors a gallery wall of vintage and Deco prints, and suits a living room, hallway, study, dining room or home office, bringing a note of 1920s design flair wherever it hangs.

Each print is produced to order on premium 189 gsm museum-grade archival matte paper with fade-resistant pigment inks, for rich, gallery-quality colour and crisp, faithful detail. Choose your size from the drop-down menu: 8x12, 12x18, 16x24, 20x30 or 24x36 inches. Orders are carefully packaged and shipped rolled in a sturdy tube, or flat for the smallest size; a frame is not included.

This is a faithful fine-art reproduction of the original stone lithograph, colour-matched and printed to archival standards rather than a flat mass-market copy. It preserves the texture and character of the antique poster while arriving crisp, clean and ready to frame.

It makes a memorable gift for anyone who loves vintage travel posters, Art Deco design, French regional heritage or the golden age of rail, and a lasting way to bring a piece of interwar style into a home, studio or workplace.