Creator
Baron Jérôme Pichon
Title
The Life of Charles Henry Count Hoym, Ambassador from Saxony-Poland to France and Eminent French Bibliophile, 1694-1736.
Coverage
New York
Publisher
The Grolier Club
Date
1899
Description
In the first few decades of its existence, the Grolier Club regularly printed a very small number—usually no more than three—of the copies in a particular edition on vellum. The process of printing on prepared animal skin was difficult and expensive, but the result was luxurious in the extreme, achieving visual and tactile effects impossible to duplicate in standard printing on paper; and the auction of these very special copies at the Club's Annual Meeting regularly brought substantial sums for the Grolier's publication fund.
A very few of these exceedingly rare “unicorns” have made their way back to the Club, and this one nicely complements the spectacular Hoym manuscript inventory acquired by the Club in 2012. We don’t know which early Grolier Club member acquired this vellum copy at auction in the year 1900, but whoever he was, he commissioned the Club Bindery in 1905 to dress the volume in full crushed morocco, with the Club device in gilt on the covers.
A very few of these exceedingly rare “unicorns” have made their way back to the Club, and this one nicely complements the spectacular Hoym manuscript inventory acquired by the Club in 2012. We don’t know which early Grolier Club member acquired this vellum copy at auction in the year 1900, but whoever he was, he commissioned the Club Bindery in 1905 to dress the volume in full crushed morocco, with the Club device in gilt on the covers.