Riquet/Mammut-Kakao
Artist
Ludwig Hohlwein
Germany, 1874 - 1949
Datec. 1925
MediumStone Lithograph
Dimensions43 1/2 x 29 in. (110.5 x 73.7 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.7903
DescriptionLudwig Hohlwein was commissioned to design many promotional posters for the Riquet firm (including several others for Mammut-Kakao) and he seems to have played an important role in establishing its modern image. In 1929, the satirist and writer Hans Reimann stated that "You know Riquet from the magnificent posters of Ludwig Hohlwein." Riquet was founded in Leipzig, Germany in 1745 as an importer of tea, coffee, cocoa, and other “colonial” goods. By 1890, it had also set up an independent operation for the manufacture and sale of cocoa and chocolate products, and soon opened an elegant store in town and a factory in nearby Gautszch. While surviving tins for the company’s cocoa indicate that the product was originally called Cacao Riquet and its mascot was an elephant (there are two elephant heads on the original Jugendstil store front, from its redesign of 1908), by 1910 it had been renamed Mammut-Kakao (Mammoth Cocoa) and its mascot was now a more ambitious mammoth promising a “Voll Stark” (full-strength) product. The design, with its bold, simple forms and a limited color palette, integrated with distinctive lettering, and focused on the product being advertised is characteristic of Hohlwein's style. In this case, however, he does not show cocoa but the towering figure of the firm’s promotional mammoth.On View
Not on view
