Le Meilleur, le moins cher, pneu vélo Michelin - an original poster, 1910, advertising the French cycle trade.

French track cycling between the 1890s and the 1920s drew crowds that few sports could match, and the trade advertised accordingly. Tyre and cycle makers put champions on their posters the way car makers later used racing drivers - the machine sold because a famous man had won on it, and the poster was where that argument was made.

Michelin has advertised through Bibendum since 1898, when the Clermont-Ferrand firm turned a stack of tyres into a figure and gave him a Latin motto - "Nunc est bibendum", now is the time to drink - that doubled as a claim that its tyres drank up the obstacles in the road. Few trademarks have survived a century so nearly unchanged.

Prepared from a high-resolution scan of an original lithographic poster, flattened and trimmed to the sheet so the design prints edge to edge. Printed on archival cotton-fibre paper to order, and available mounted or framed - both cut to size in our own workshop.