Henry Clemens van de Velde. Printer: Hollerbaum & Schmidt, Berlin, Germany. Tropon, l'Aliment Le Plus Concentré (Tropon, the most concentrated nourishment). 1899. Lithograph, 44 x 30 3/8" (111.8 x 77.2 cm). Arthur Drexler Fund
In the 1890s Van de Velde used the fashionable, highly stylized language of Art Nouveau to advertise a product as mundane as an egg-based protein extract. The late nineteenth century witnessed a revolution in industrial-food processing, starting with coffee, cocoa, and a range of meat and dairy products. Such processed foods and their burgeoning brand identities rapidly became integral to modern living, transforming traditional patterns of shopping, cooking, and at-home food storage.