Bindings in the Spotlight (7)

This month we are featuring the French Art Deco bookbinder Rose Adler (1892-1959) and her binding for Theocritus' Idylls in French illustrated by Henri Laurens (Kessler.a.23).  Accompanying the book, which is part of the Kessler Collection of livres d'artistes and fine bindings, are three pages of notes in Adler's hand which relate to the details …

Bindings in the Spotlight (5)

  Jean de Gonet (1950-) is one of the best-known modern French binders.  His work represents a revolution in traditional modern binding featuring visible sewing structures and the use of unusual materials, including metals, rubber and plastic.  On display are a number of examples taken from the Kessler Collection.  As an example of an unusual …

Bindings in the Spotlight (3)

Designed by the famous French binder Paul Bonet (1889-1971) in 1949, this is one of 28 different copies or versions of the 1937 edition of Alphonse Daudet's 'Aventures prodigieuses de Tartarin de Tarascon' (Kessler.a.28).  Daudet's 1872 novel concerns the town of Tarascon and the misadventures of a certain Tartarin: "The Provençal town of Tarascon is …

Bindings in the Spotlight (1)

This year a regular monthly blog post will highlight some of the most interesting book and manuscript bindings in our collection. To begin, we are featuring a beautiful contemporary binding by James Brockman (b. 1946) of the French translation of Johann Goethe's 'Faust' (Kessler.bb.10).  Covered in full maroon Harmatan goatskin, the design has been tooled …

The Voyages Extraordinaires of Jules Verne

The Voyages Extraordinaires (literally Extraordinary Voyages or Extraordinary Journeys) are a sequence of fifty-four novels by the French writer Jules Verne (1828-1905), originally published between 1863 and 1905. According to Verne's editor Pierre-Jules Hetzel, the goal of the Voyages was "to outline all the geographical, geological, physical, and astronomical knowledge amassed by modern science and …