The Virtual Absinthe Museum
Ahhh. Decadence.

You simply could not have been a self-respecting Symbolist poet in late nineteenth century Paris if you didn't drink the eerily green, wormwood fortified drink called absinthe. Though prohibitionists claimed you'd eventually pick up a hatchet and slaughter your entire family, this was no real deterrent to the aesthete, and the bitter liquor therefore inspired a generation of Art Nouveau, bizarre poetry, post-Impressionist painting, and can-can girls.
At The Virtual Absinthe Museum we can catch a glimpse of that, if only through its graphics - many of them quite rare and, as the Museum tells us, not otherwise available.

Vintage Absinthe Posters - Celebrating Absinthe

The Museum's wonderful collection of absinthe art includes many vintage advertising graphics, like these familiar Art Nouveau posters for Absinthe Robette and Absinthe Ducros Fils.
The signature green colors we associate with the liquor are complemented by the red hair of the Robette model, and rich reds replace the drink's own color entirely in the Ducros Fils poster.
It's a rusty red invocation of good times and bad drinks.
As time went on, of course, prohibitionists began - and eventually won - a war against absinthe. So many of the later pro-absinthe graphics here are defenses against the prohibitionists' attack.

Here, for example, a 1910 poster against the abolition of absinthe in which a decidedly undecadent priest tramples the helpless form of the Green Fairy, absinthe's symbolic muse.
While on the right we see a distillers' attempt to create a socially acceptable form of the drink in "Absinthine" - which one supposes was the Near Beer of absinthes.
The whole thing came to a head by 1915 with a popular prohibition movement succeeding in abolishing absinthe in one European nation after another.


Vintage Absinthe Posters - Abolishing Absinthe


You'd think that most of the good art would have gone in defense of absinthe. Or anyway, that's what I'd think.
But those anti-wormwood teetotalers had a few decent artists up their sleeves, too, judging by what the Museum has to offer.
Death and dissolution are frequent themes in these, of course.
When push comes to shove, a lot of great bits of vintage graphics came out of both sides of the debate, and the Museum's done a fine job of keeping both those sides alive in their Museum Store .

Each one of these designs is available as a reproduction poster or as a framed archival print, in sizes that range from 11 x 17" to 18 x 26", as well as on calendars, journal covers, and greeting cards.


An Eclectic Emporium of Absinthiana

And in addition there's a decent selection of t shirts, coffee mugs, hooded sweatshirts, tote bags, and other assorted absinthiana for your decadent perusal.

Altogether, a visit to this Museum is time well spent. The eye candy is attractive, and it's a window to another time - not so different from this one, when you think about it: we have our own prohibitions, after all.
And there's simply no time quite like those turn-of-the-century days in Paris. Browsing these selections of Art Nouveau and vintage label designs is a rare treat.
So treat yourself, already!
That's what decadence is for.