When butchers inspired artists: Calf in a Butcher’s Shop Window by Gustav Caillebotte (1882)
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Food in 19th century Paris was a serious matter requiring perfection at all levels including an artful display.
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The Government of Paris kept an attentive eye on the cleanliness of food retailers’ shops, particularly the butchers. This poultry shop obtained multiple awards
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These cones with sticky surface helped to keep food free from flies.
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Not the usual fare, a camel’s carcass is prominently displayed in this fancy wild game shop
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Seafood was delivered from this shop to your address
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Potato market on the Seine. Meat was for the well-to-do bourgeois. Poorer people made do with bread and potatoes. A piece of salted pork was added on Sundays. Other meat was reserved only for special celebrations
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A mother-and-daughter sidewalk produce shop
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A grocery store, such as this one, was a relative novelty. Until the second half of the 19th century, the Parisian grocery trade had very few fixed premises. Merchandise was sold in bulk from the central market or retailed from pushcarts. The imported and gourmet items sold in the brick-and-mortar shops remained out of reach for the poorest, who mostly subsisted on a monotonous diet of milk, bread, potatoes, and pork fat.
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While today you go shopping to the store, in the past the store came to you in small pieces. Here comes the produce section
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Loaded pushcarts, ready to go
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The street was a noisy place with merchants on wheels shouting their wares
Les Halles were the commercial heart of Paris, a place of exchange and supply to the abundant life that had developed over the centuries. An entire chapter in Paris history was closed in 1971 with the destruction of this central market.
The Boarding House transports you back to Paris during the enchanting Belle Époque period with a diverse ensemble of players: young and old, servants and socialites, French and foreign, polite and ill-mannered. It’s delicious, devious, and delightful. Iva Polansky writes with a style and authenticity you might wonder if she was there in another life.
NEW!
One for All
Madelon-la-Belle left Paris twenty years ago to escape her damaged reputation. She abandoned her infant daughter, Louise, in the care of her sister. Now she is back, a wealthy widow, and she plans to be a caring mother. Her idea of caring motherhood is to make Louise a high-born heiress. It only needs a little deception.This does not sit well with Louise’s father, Captain d’Artagnan of the Royal Musketeers, who finds Madelon’s plan unsound. He wants to see Louise married as soon as possible, before she becomes a slut like her mother, and has already found a good husband for her. Unfortunately, the formidable Madelon does not agree with d’Artagnan’s choice. A battle of wills ensues, involving d’Artagnan’s long-lost friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. A comedy based on Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel The Three Musketeers.
Fame and Infamy / Adventures of an American Maid in Paris
Otto von Bismarck, German secret police, celebrated French artists and Miss Nelly McKay of Butte, Montana, come together in this lively mystery set in 1870’s Paris.
Print or ebook, 410 pages
He was right. She was right. Together they were wrong
THE WAR OF THE TOLSTOYS
Leo Tolstoy’s last days: In 1910, newspapers around the world reported the tribulations of Russia’s most famous writer. The War of the Tolstoys tells it all.
Screenplay, 110 pages
Passion and Wit and Ménage à Trois ( a true story)
Our Divine Emilie
Two of the brightest minds of the French Enlightenment, Voltaire and Emilie du Châtelet, meet the poet Saint-Lambert in a dangerous liaison. Court intrigue, conspiracy, and betrayal are in abundance in this comedy/drama. (A Screenplay)
Victorian Paris 
Very interesting. I love all the old photos.
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