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cardboard, cobalt salts
Before us is a Baromètre artistique — a souvenir card-barometer dating to the mid-20th century (c. 1945–1960). The object takes the form of a rectangular card measuring 90 × 140 mm, made of stiff cardboard. On the reverse appears the inscription: “Baromètres Perrotey, Clamart (Seine) – Imprimé en France”, indicating a probable manufacturer or publisher — most likely a small local or family enterprise based in Clamart (a suburb of Paris), for which no reliable archival information has yet been identified.
The composition of the card is a characteristic example of postwar French devotional kitsch, where religious imagery is combined with decorative and domestic function.
The central image depicts the Virgin Mary (of Lourdes) accompanied by the inscription “JE SUIS L’IMMACULÉE CONCEPTION” (“I am the Immaculate Conception”). This is not an abstract title, but a direct quotation of the words spoken on March 25, 1858, during one of the apparitions in Lourdes to the young Bernadette Soubirous. The phrase, originally delivered in the local Occitan dialect (“Que soy era Immaculada Councepciou”), became a crucial confirmation of the dogma proclaimed by Pope Pius IX only four years earlier. Within the context of 20th-century mass culture, this episode became one of the key visual and textual markers of Lourdes iconography.
The figure of the Virgin is rendered strictly according to the canonical type:
This iconographic type derives from the sculpture by Joseph-Hugues Fabisch (1864), which became the standard model for subsequent reproductions.
The surrounding scene reproduces recognizable elements of Lourdes:
At the bottom appears a ribbon bearing the inscription “Protégez-nous” (“Protect us”) — a typical formula of supplication widely used on pilgrimage souvenirs.
The graphic execution is in color print (lithography or offset), with a clear black outline and saturated flat colors — a characteristic visual language of French mass-produced religious imagery of the 1940s–1950s, balancing naïve decorative quality with symbolic intensity.
Despite its pronounced decorative and religious character, the object performs a specific meteorological function.
In the lower part of the composition is a small “pond” — a sensitive element coated with a substance based on cobalt chloride. This chemical indicator changes color depending on ambient humidity: -under low humidity it takes on a blue hue, -as humidity increases it shifts to violet and pink tones.
Thus, the instrument responds not to atmospheric pressure but to humidity, placing it closer to simple hygrometric indicators, although in everyday and commercial terms it is referred to as a “barometer.”
At the top of the card, a textual legend is provided:
It is also specified that the card should be placed in a well-ventilated area (“bien aérée”), as air circulation directly affects the response of the indicator.
This object represents a characteristic example of the intersection of science, religion, and everyday culture in the mid-20th century. Beneath the guise of a simple “barometer” lies a hybrid object — at once a souvenir, an element of domestic devotion, and a visual tool for popularizing basic meteorological observation. Its value lies not so much in measurement accuracy as in its ability to reflect the cultural context of its time, in which faith, decorative art, and domestic science coexisted within a unified visual and symbolic framework.
