About the binding:

Full leather binding Moss-green Morocco goatskin; gold-tooled longitudinal title on smooth spine, symmetrical decoration with onlays in eight different leathers on front cover board; deckle edges, sewn silk endbands; doublure and flyleaf moss-green Ingres paper.

(Contents somewhat foxed throughout, defective drop-back box discarded.) Edwin Heim on this binding in 2016: “I made the binding in 1974 during my second stay in Paris at Atelier Altermatt. After my return to Switzerland, the volume was acquired by an American collector called Norman Strauss.”

About the content:

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: Chinesisch-deutsche Jahres- und Tageszeiten

With 14 original etchings by Imre Reiner.

Copy no 72 of 120 on Richard de Bas handmade paper, signed by the artist. Centro del bel libro, Ascona, 1969.

This work, Chinese-German Times of Year and Day, is a collection of poems combining motifs from Chinese, German and Persian poetry. It was written in 1827 and first published in Berlin in 1830.

Imre Reiner was a Hungarian-Swiss painter and graphic artist and an important type designer.

About the artist: Edwin Heim chose bookbinding as his profession because he wanted to learn a creative craft. After his apprenticeship as a handcraft bookbinder in Aarau, he increased his knowledge and skills at the Scuola d’arte per legatori artistici (now Centro del bel libro) in Ascona and with Ole Olsen in Copenhagen. Later, he attended the gilding class at the École Estienne in Paris. After his return to Switzerland, he became head of Josef Stemmle’s Legatoria artistica in Ascona and, in 1984, of the department “binding and design” at the Centro del bel libro as the successor of Hugo Peller. There, he trained experts from all over the world for around 25 years.

At the same time, he was a guest lecturer and expert juror in Switzerland and abroad and took part in numerous exhibitions and competitions himself. He has received many awards and honours. Today he lives and works as a freelancer in Ascona.