Twentieth & Twenty-First Centuries

Lynd Ward.  Gods’ Man: A Novel in Woodcuts.  New York: Cape & Smith, 1929. 

Lynd Ward.  Madman’s Drum: A Novel in Woodcuts.  New York: Cape & Smith, 1930. 

These paired Art Deco bindings, in glazed black calf with white suede inlays representing lightning flashes, were created by Eliseo Tealdi in Florence in 1930.  They were commissioned by a young American student of art, Marjorie Sawyer Goodman (later, Graff), then resident in Florence. 

Gift of Robert & Marjorie Graff, 2008. 

Cat. no. 7.7. 

Michel Butor & Bertrand Dorny.  Métropolitain.  Livre d’artiste.  Paris & Nice, 1985. 

The volume of author’s manuscript and artist’s collages was bound by Renaud Vernier and Claude Ribal in gray goatskin.  The polychrome design depicts elements of the Paris Métro beneath opened-up buildings depicted in the characteristic limestone of the City of Light. 

Gift of Jill Oriane Tarlau, 1999. 

Cat. no. 7.18. 

Henri de Monterlant.  Pasiphaé: Chant des Minos (les Crétois).  Paris: Fabiani, 1944. 

Famous for its linoleum-cut illustrations by Matisse, this example is renowned for its pictorial Spanish binding by Santiago Brugalla.  It features sculptured elements within a Cretan/Minoan overall design, along with white lambswool doublures. 

Gift of Jill Oriane Tarlau. 

Cat. no. 7.17. 

Brass binding die.  Paris, 1920s. 

This die, in several slightly differing versions with minor changes to permit different titling, was made for Pierre Legrain, the founder of the Art Deco binding, after his design.  The overall pattern, stamped in gilt, appeared on works by Verlaine and Colette in 1920 and 1921, respectively. 

Purchased at the Boston Antiquarian Book Fair, 2011. 

Cat. no. 7.5. 

Paul Valéry, Paul Éluard, Renée Moutard- Uldry, Georges Blaizot, & Louis-Marie Michon.  Paul Bonet.  Paris: Auguste Blaizot, 1945 [but 1946]. 

This extensive survey of Bonet’s binding designs over the first quarter-century of his work, compiled by several of his supporters, is one of 50 copies with original material from his designs.  Bonet described this example as the very epitome of his “radiating” design, excellently executed by one of his principal gilders. 

Gift of Laura K. & Valerian Lada-Mocarski, 1975. 

Cat. no. 7.10. 

Edwin L. Sabin.  The Pike’s Peak Rush; or, Terry in the New Gold Fields.  New York: Crowell, 1917. 

The publisher’s cloth-covered case binding is in notably bright condition for a century-old book written for a young-adult audience.  It is accompanied by the brass binding die that produced the black-printed text and design elements on the front cover. 

Purchased in 2015 (binding die) & 2019 (book). 

Cat. no. 7.4. 

Geoffroy Tory.  Champ Fleury.  Paris: Tory & Gourmont, 28 April 1529. 

When the Club purchased this example in 1889 it was bound in a disintegrating 18th-century binding.  Rebound sympathetically in New York in 1975, it was stamped with a reproduction of Tory’s publisher’s binding die, its shattered vase memorializing his daughter Agnès, who died at the age of nine. 

Purchased by order of the Council, 1889. 

Cat. no. 7.15. 

Stanley Morison.  Fra Luca de Pacioli of Borgo S. Sepolcro.  New York: The Grolier Club, 1933. 

This striking and imaginative binding was created by Michael Wilcox, a Canadian artist, in 1982.  The midnight-blue goatskin is covered in red goatskin letterforms, for the author and title, on both covers.  It is the most elaborate of seven Club copies, of which one is on large paper and six are in variant English bindings. 

Acquired under unrecorded circumstance, perhaps commissioned by the Club. 

Cat. no. 7.16. 

Mark Beard.  Neo-Classik Comix: Adventures of 27th Street.  New York: Vincent FitzPatrick, 1985. 

The horizontal or landscape-format binding of magenta goatskin features hologram-like red plastic “window” inserts spelling out the author’s name.  It was created in Paris by Georges Leroux in 1993. 

Gift of Jill Oriane Tarlau. 

Cat. no. 7.20. 

PAB (Pierre-André Benoit).  Mue.  Alès: PAB, 1954. 

PAB.  François rit.  Alès: PAB, 1955. 

These miniature books were bound in France by Sün Evrard in 2002.  In dark-blue and black calf, respectively, they feature Mme Evrard’s different styles of spatter and cut-out décor, the covers attached to the bookblocks with her characteristic gold fittings. 

Gifts of Neale M. Albert in memory of his daughter Deborah Beth Albert, 2010. 

Cat. no. 8.1 a-b. 

Lara Prescott.  The Secrets We Kept, a Novel.  New York: Knopf, 2019. 

The gilt-outlined blank star on the front of the dustjacket hints at the hidden treatment of the publisher’s case binding.  Instead of the expected three-part colored paper cover imitating a cloth spine with paper-covered boards, one is surprised to find a wintry Russian landscape suitable to the book’s theme of Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago. 

Gift of Florence S. Fletcher, 2020. 

Cat. no. 8.2. 

Svato Zapletal.  Ich bin nur Flamme: Gedichte des Expressionismus.  Hamburg: Svato Verlag, 1999. 

The author’s linoleum-cut illustrations in the book inspired the artist-bookbinder Ulrich Widmann to create this allusive binding at his studio in Freiburg im Breisgau in 2019.  It is dyed and painted in a free-form, self-contained polychrome design over gilt cuir-ciselé calf. 

Purchased on the Trust Fund of Lathrop Colgate Harper, 2020. 

Cat. no. 8.3.