The Terraces
The ink — every line and halftone dot holds at full size

The Continent

The Egypt Eleven at Saint-Ouen, 1920

Egypt in Paris in the summer it became the first side from outside Europe at the Olympics.

Work
press photograph
Maker
Agence Rol
Date
1920
Ground
Saint-Ouen, Paris
Era
The interwar game · 1919–1930
Source
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica · via Wikimedia Commons
The year the Olympic game left Europe.

Format

The full-resolution scan, colour-managed to the source — yours to print, study, and explore.

Size

$29.00

The story

Équipe d’Égypte, Saint-Ouen, 1 August 1920: the Egyptian football team, photographed by Agence Rol on the northern edge of Paris. That summer Egypt became the first nation from outside Europe to take part in the Olympic football tournament, which was held at Antwerp in 1920, and its first appearance began a record no other African nation has matched. Eight years later, at Amsterdam, the same national side would finish fourth. This photograph is from the start of that story, in the year the Olympic game stopped being a European affair.

See it on your wall

The piece, in the room it was made for

The Egypt Eleven at Saint-Ouen, 1920, printed large and framed — in the den, the club bar, the supporters’ bar. Every edition ships ready to become the piece the room is built around.

The Egypt Eleven at Saint-Ouen, 1920 framed on the wall
The Egypt Eleven at Saint-Ouen, 1920 framed on the wall
The Egypt Eleven at Saint-Ouen, 1920 framed on the wall
The Egypt Eleven at Saint-Ouen, 1920 framed on the wall

About this reproduction

  • A reproduction of press photograph — Agence Rol, 1920 — from the copy held by Bibliothèque nationale de France, Gallica · via Wikimedia Commons. The source. The work was published before 1931 and is public-domain verified.
  • Printed faithful to that source scan — restore honestly, disclose always. We do not re-colour it, complete it, or interpret it; the piece you receive is the image as it survives, halftone grain honored as history, not damage.
  • Printed to order on museum-grade cotton-rag stock with pigment inks — the pairing is rated 100+ years.
  • Colour-managed to the source; the tone of the paper and the ink is the period’s, not ours.
  • Ships in 5–10 business days, rolled in a heavy-wall tube (framed editions ship flat-packed).
  • If it arrives less than perfect, we reprint or refund — your choice.

Why our pieces cost more than a poster: a poster is a mass run on wood-pulp stock, colour-corrected to whatever flattered the press that day. This is one sheet, pulled for you, at a size where the maker’s hand is visible — the linework, the halftone grain, the lettering — on materials made to outlast their owner.

From the same hand

The Bordeaux Ground, 1908 — glass plate negative, Agence Rol, Agence Rol, 1908

Agence Rol · 1908

The Bordeaux Ground, 1908

The earliest surviving Rol plate of the French game — a provincial ground before the crowds arrived.

Everything starts on a field with a rope round it.
Lisbon and Barcelona in Paris, Boxing Day 1920 — glass plate negative, Agence Rol, 26 December 1920, Agence Rol, 1920

Agence Rol · 1920

Lisbon and Barcelona in Paris, Boxing Day 1920

A Portuguese club against a Catalan one, in France, two days after Christmas — the game already stateless.

The rules travelled faster than anything else Britain exported.
An English Club in Paris, May 1921 — glass plate negative, Agence Rol, 15 May 1921, Agence Rol, 1921

Agence Rol · 1921

An English Club in Paris, May 1921

A London side lines up at the Bergeyre — the missionary fixture, photographed at last.

Football was taught by demonstration, on tour, in the spring.