Journal
Notes on coffee in art
Short editorial pieces — on the artists, printers, and institutions whose work survives in this archive.
Every piece in the catalog has a story longer than its caption can hold. Why a Belgian printer in 1898 chose orientalist iconography for a Brussels coffee brand. How a Swiss village painter put a hand-cranked grinder at the center of a Sunday afternoon. What an 1840 Brazilian plantation looked like to an Italian painter working from memory in 1920. Why a Wellcome lithograph of a Cairo coffeehouse is documentary record and orientalist commerce at the same time, and how to look at it with both eyes open.
This Journal is where those longer notes live — deep-dives on single pieces, comparative pieces on artists and printers who worked the same genre, short histories of the institutions whose collections we draw from, and practical notes for the bartender, the café owner, and the home barista thinking about how to put one of these pieces on a wall.
Articles publish weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays.
In preparation
- Two Rajahs — Privat-Livemont and Meunier in Brussels, 1897–1899. A comparative read on the two Belgian Art Nouveau Rajahs — the coffee and the tea — from the same brand, two streets apart, two years apart.
- Why orientalist coffee posters belong in this archive. An editorial position on Belle Époque commercial iconography and how we caption it.
- Albert Anker and the Sunday coffee ritual in a Swiss farmhouse. On Old Man with Coffee Grinder (1886) and the genre of the quiet domestic.
- The botanical illustration of Coffea arabica, 1750–1900. A 150-year visual record across Wellcome, Gallica, and Kew.
Editorial questions — hello@coffeeposters.com