"ARTICLES DE PARIS"

Dominion, Volume 10, Issue 2971, 8 January 1917, Page 10

"ARTICLES DE PARIS"

MADE IN GJOUMANY

■ "Articles do Paris" used to be Parisian toy or knick-knacks tfhich everybody- bought in the confident belief ho was helping oil the small Parisian. An artisan exhibition just opened in the Tuilories undeceives us, writes the Paris correspondent of the "Morning Post." It consists of a collection of samples in the possession of German commercial travellers in Paris, which was seized at the outbreak of the war. Tho collection includes specimens of every imaginable so-called "article do Paris," from musical instruments to pocket-combs, from cheap jewellery to cheap art porcelain German trade imitated everything that the small Parisian artisans made. They assiduously produced souvenirs of every French seasido resort and bathing-place with suitablo inscriptions, they made dolls with the dress of every French province and especially Alsatian paper lnittorns with patriotic French inscriptions for July 14, the national fote. They did more. Some time before tho war a. German commercial traveller went to seo a mustard manufacturer at Dijon and offered ;i tender for mustard pots. The mustard manufacturer, annoyed at beins pestered, said: "Deliver me 2000 mustard pots in tho design of a pip; with a Prussian holmei, and I will buy them." Ho thought,lie had got rid of tho German bagman.'- Not at all. Two thousand mustard pots according to specification duly arrived, and bo had to buy them. The present exhibition gives the prices at which "articles do Paris" made in Germany were offered by Gorman travellers. They arc lower tiiiin any Parisian makers could ,ask, and nro also lower, as has been ascertained, than tho samo goods fetched in Germany.