My predilections as a collector have spanned multiple centuries and genres (incunabula, private press, autograph letters, architectural plate books, the list continues and evolves…), but as my bibliophilic attachments are fundamentally aesthetic and visual, it should be no surprise that the most intimate and abiding of these interests is fine bindings.
In the latter domain, my tastes tend to gravitate around the French master binders of the eighteenth century and the Art Deco period (i.e. the interbellum of the 1920s-30s). That said, the three Parisian books that I have—rather impulsively—selected for this virtual exhibition belong to neither of those eras, but rather to the mid-seventeenth century, the Belle Époque, and our current age, thereby reflecting a medley of styles, but a timeless Gallic love of beauty.
Jean Magnon Les heures du Chrestien, divisées en trois journées Paris: Sébastien Martin, 1654.
A specimen of a rare type of binding found in the seventeenth century, dubbed “plein or,” or full gilt, by Isabelle de Conihout and Pascal Ract Madoux (cf. Reliures françaises du XVIIe siècle, chefs d’oeuvre du musée Condé, p. 97), who mention having encountered merely fifteen examples. Characterized by dense and repeated clusters of small ‘filigree’ tools that adorn the entire board, this flamboyant style almost exclusively appears on devotional works, as is the case here, with a book of hours dedicated “à la Grande Mademoiselle,” namely Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, first cousin of Louis XIV, and the greatest heiress of her day.
Paul Verlaine Fêtes Galantes Paris: Charles Meunier, 1903.
The binder of this sumptuous book, Grégoire Guimpel Levitzky (1885-1969), was a native of Odessa, where he mastered his trade; he eventually moved to Paris, first working under the binder Hippolyte Prouté (upon whom the bibliophile Octave Uzanne lavished words of praise in La reliure moderne artistique et fantaisiste), before establishing his own bindery at 22 rue de l’Odéon in 1910, attracting an international clientele that included King Albert I of Belgium and Alexander I of Serbia. Although capable of more boldly avant-garde designs, Levitzky appropriately opted for a pastiche of the eighteenth-century manner to embellish this edition of Verlaine’s Fêtes Galantes, illustrated with Watteau-esque semi-erotic pastoral scenes by the painter Alcide Théophile Robaudi. Yet amid the rococo ornamentation of the pink-and-grey mosaics on the boards and doublures, a decidedly modern flourish emerges in the lushly painted—almost ‘Fauvist’—silk flyleaves.
Jean Echenoz Baobab Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 2022.
This gemlike binding by Florent Rousseau (b. 1962) offers a glimpse of the contemporary scene in France. Rousseau serves as President of the Atelier d’Arts Appliqués du Vésinet, an institution in a leafy suburb of Paris devoted to the teaching of traditional crafts, with a focus on the book arts. His trademarks are meticulously crafted paper and metallic bindings, but he playfully experiments with a broad range of materials and methods – in this instance, grey leather that has been stamped under heat with swirling iridescent patterns that evoke mother-of-pearl, punctuated by irregular filets of silver leaf; in typically French fashion, there is a greater division of artistic labour, and the gilding has been handled by a separate workshop, the Paris-based Atelier La Feuille d’Or. Here, one senses a nod towards the ‘industrial’ modernity of Art Deco, but also a fresh artistic voice that testifies to Rousseau’s flair in bridging old and new.
