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Shipping calculated at checkoutAbout Why Girls Go Astray
A purveyor of eccentric, exquisite decoupage hand crafted glass trays.
Painstakingly recreating 18th and 19th Century decoupage techniques.
200 x 120 cm
Founded by a Chicago-based artist, the brand specializes in creating unique, vintage-inspired catch-all and table trays using traditional 18th- and 19th-century potichomania techniques. In this process, historical paper imagery is meticulously layered under bent glass, allowing the glass to serve as both a foundation and a protective glossy finish.
Made in USA
This image is a copy of “La Tour Eiffel foudroyée” (“The Eiffel Tower Struck by Lightning”), a famous photograph taken by the French painter and photographer Gabriel Loppé in 1902.
The photograph
Loppé photographed the Eiffel Tower during a thunderstorm from the balcony of his apartment at 14 Avenue du Trocadéro, directly across from the Tower. The original inscription records the time as 9:20 in the evening.
What makes the photograph remarkable is that the lightning appears to strike the Tower itself, rather than simply appearing somewhere behind it.
And Loppé wasn't simply lucky. He was fascinated by the Eiffel Tower and photographed it repeatedly from his apartment balcony, including during storms.
Why the image is historically important
This wasn't just a spectacular photograph. It was taken at a very early point in the history of photographing lightning.
The 1902 photograph is regarded as one of the earliest photographs of lightning in an urban setting. It was subsequently reproduced in Camille Flammarion's Thunder and Lightning, published in 1906.
Even more wonderfully, Gustave Eiffel himself admired Loppé's photograph and wrote to him asking for copies.
The photograph is now held in collections including the Musée d'Orsay and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. The MFAH identifies the work as a gelatin silver print from 1902.