Nunc est Bibendum "A votre santé". Le pneu Michelin boit l'obstacle - an original poster by Marius Rossillon, 1913, advertising the early motoring trade.

Motoring in the first decades of the century was an argument with the road surface, and the trade advertised on that basis: grip, durability, and the ability to keep going where the road gave out. The posters promise endurance rather than speed, and they do it with the comic exaggeration the period expected of commercial art.

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.

Marius Rossillon, who signed his work O'Galop, gave the world Bibendum. The Michelin Man arrived in 1898 out of a Latin tag, "Nunc est bibendum" - now is the time to drink - turned into a pun on a tyre that drinks up obstacles. O'Galop's poster work carries the same broad comic timing he brought to early animated film.

Reproduced from a high-resolution scan of an original printing, cleaned of mounting and scanning artefacts so nothing but the poster reaches the paper. Each print is made to order on heavyweight cotton-fibre archival paper. Mounts and frames are cut and finished by hand in our workshop.