Emil Ferris, our beloved witch, casts a spell on the 14th edition of our Advent calendar.
This year, À la Mère de Famille invites Emil Ferris, a major figure in contemporary graphic novels, to transform the now-famous shop into a fantastic theater. Under the American artist's ballpoint pens, gargoyles, chimeras, and mischievous monsters take possession of the historic facade on rue du Faubourg Montmartre to inhabit two versions of the calendar: the "Pre-Advent" calendar, which opens the doors to this marvelous universe starting the last week of November, and then the Advent calendar, which reveals its surprises day after day, until Christmas.
Emil Ferris, the enchanting illustrator from America
Since 2013, À la Mère de Famille has entrusted the illustration of its Advent calendar each year to an artist it admires. For this 14th edition, the oldest chocolate shop in Paris has chosen Emil Ferris, whose unique universe has long seemed destined to meet that of the Maison.
Passionate about monsters since childhood, nourished by 1950s-1960s horror films and EC comics, the American artist has made these creatures a unique medium of expression: no longer horrific figures, but characters transfigured by the soul of the places they inhabit—sensitive, funny, and terribly endearing. Awarded the Fauve d’Or at Angoulême and the Eisner Award for her graphic novel My Favorite Thing Is Monsters (published in 2017), Emil Ferris marks her first collaboration with a French House here.
From shadow to light: a marvelous Christmas, between Parisian legends and fantastic creatures
For À la Mère de Famille, Emil Ferris drew from the imagination of a secret and marvelous Paris to bring a facade populated by extraordinary creatures to life. Gargoyles and other chimeras watching over the rooftops of Notre-Dame Cathedral meet dragons, jellyfish, octopuses, ghosts, and city sprites, composing a fantastic gallery where the Christmas spirit blends with Parisian legends. Metamorphosed by her ballpoint pen drawings (her artistic signature being made of precise and colorful hatching), these monsters become characters as mischievous as they are playful.
Like a diptych, the collaboration unfolds in two chapters to make the magic of Christmas begin in the final days of November: the Pre-Advent calendar lures gourmets into the depths of the Parisian catacombs, which are already whispering their Christmas secrets. Then, as the holidays approach, the creatures return to the light to take over the historic À la Mère de Famille building and mingle with the effervescence of holiday preparations: candles to light, wreaths to hang, and the sweet bustle characteristic of December. Behind every window, a treat is revealed like a new apparition in this extraordinary world; among them, a majority of the House’s iconic chocolates and other delicious confections.
A meeting defined by openness
Through this collaboration, À la Mère de Famille and Emil Ferris celebrate a shared taste for the marvelous, the imaginative, transmission, and the stories we tell one another. Because the artist knows monsters better than anyone: she gives them a new place, rehabilitating the marginalized, the misunderstood, and all those who don't fit into boxes, throughout an Advent calendar whose every window invites you to discover them.
Like a sweet spell, her universe gently infused the history of the oldest chocolate shop in Paris, before feeling perfectly natural. Waiting for Christmas has never been so monstrously delicious
