Card of the Day - 2024-04-29

Lion Noir French Colonies
Lion Noir [trade : shoe polish : O/S : France] "Les Colonies Francaises" / "French Colonies" (1930) Un/?

This card refers to the fact that a lot of the original and later Star Wars films were shot in Tunisia.

In fact the Tunisian town of Tataouine, where many of the film crews were based, is immortalised in the Star Wars empire - as not only the planet Tatooine, but also its very make up, of underground dwellings dug out of the rock by the native Berbers, was used as the design for housing in Luke Skywalker`s adopted home with his step-uncle and aunt, though he believed them to be blood relatives. 

Today Tunisia is still a popular site for filming, and it also uses its Star Wars fame in publicity, attracting tourists. You can see some of the places that are so strongly connected at the Smithsonian Institute/RealStarWars

For a long time I was unable to find much out about this company, but then I worked the chemical link and discovered that they were founded in 1917, and that they were listed as Chemical Producers. The type of chemical was very elusive indeed, but I presumed that it must have been something not too dangerous and corrosive, because the very nature of cards is that they were issued to encourage the general public to buy more of the product - and the general public would not have bought huge quantities of noxious substances. 

So after another hunt I can report it was nothing of the kind, simply shoe polish. Though the same black lion - or, in French, Lion Noir - symbol was also used on their metal polish tins.  Obviously they ran their business like Erdal, with all kinds of polish coming from the same stable.

I must say here big thanks to the reader who put me on the right track by sending me a link to a tin on sale on eBay, which I will not link to as it will quickly disappear after the sale is over. The tin uses the same crouching lion as on the bottom of the reverse of this card. In fact, if you look closer at the logo what the lion has at his paws is tins of the stuff, and with his right hand he is removing one of the lids. Clever lion, then, because I make an awful mess when I try to open shoe polish with both my hands. 

The same lion remained until the 1940s, at least, and the company was still in business into the late 1950s, but their lion emblem had become much simplified at that time, and was now just a lion, walking towards the right.