Reproductions: La 8e//e Epoque

If it was not the best of times, Parisians did not know it. Girls in lace frills climbed excitedly into the first asth matic automobiles. Bearded, droopy-eyed Edward VII took his cigar and his carnation to the Moulin Rouge and the Folies Bergere. Donning top hats, venturesome souls climbed nonchalantly into a balloon and blithely sipped champagne, up and up, to shiver in their stiff collars at the dizzy height of 10,000 ft.

This was the gaslight age, la belle epoque, an era doomed to end with the first shot fired at Sarajevo. The flamboyant...

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