pièce de résistance: chocolat d'aiguebelle counter

Earlier this year, while antique hunting in Paris, the louis & lavender team found this beautiful chocolate counter from around 1900. Intrigued by the sign, Chocolat d'Aiguebelle, we knew it was going to travel the pond back to North Carolina as we are avid chocolate lovers. 

Originally found in the South of France in a patisserie, this chocolate counter is still adorned in it's original paint and welcome into our collection. The patisserie it came from featured Chocolat d'Aiguebelle in its baked delicacies.

The Trappist Monks of Notre-Dame d'Aiguebelle, which is located in Southeastern France in the Rhône-Alpes region, created and ran a hugely successful chocolate business in 1868 to monetarily help themselves & the Catholic Church after the French Revolution. By the early 20th century, thanks to chromolithographies, or small color prints, and photographic advertising, they were able to advertise their Madagascan Chocolate across Europe and became one of the top ten chocolatiers in France. 

Chocolat d'Aiguebelle even went so far to create highly detailed dinosaur trading cards in the early 20th century, said to be some of the "highest quality chromolithographs" ever produced. Many other trading card sets were printed with subjects of royal families, famous world landmarks, and even butterflies as part of the advertising for their chocolate. To this day, Aiguebelle is still producing chocolate even though the company relocated to Casablanca, Morocco during World War II because of cocoa & sugar rations. 

The photos + illustration below are from Aiguebelle, an advertisement, and the different chocolates that were produced in this small abbey-village.

To see this piece of candy land history, visit our booth, G-24, at High Point Market from October 22-26.