If you can sell your own products, you can try to do the same for other products. So the Hasselt ceramics factory tried to sell its own products trough presenting them attractively in an especially made installations like the one shown here. By combining tile panels, inscriptions on tiles and architectural ornaments one realised a nice “calling card” of the company. The presentation shown here is in an Antwerp theatre. It can be dated shortly after 1905 because of the reference to the World Fair in Liège.
The pharmaceutical industry also called upon the factory in order to make them a rather special publicity object. The large “pastilles Poncelet” jars were present in merely all Belgian pharmacies. It is one of the few items on which the company made an extra publicity for itself. Showing the own company name clearly on the front of the object seems to have been exceptional.
The numerous Hasselt distilleries were important clients for the factory. They ordered large numbers of publicity items and stone bottles. Many of the publicity plates, originally distributed in large numbers, were executed in a pure Art Nouveau style.
Some of the stone bottles exceeded in style and quality by far the usual Dutch gin bottle.
The Orange-bitter bottle shown to the right is a nice example of the extra attention to design one gave to an ordinary product.
Nice publicity plate for the Leynen distillery
