About the binding:
Full leather binding Anthracite-coloured Morocco goatskin; gold-tooled title on smooth spine; red and grey leather onlays on both cover boards, groups of blind- or silver-tooled dots, leather onlay of two white lines running across cover boards and spine; gold-tooled board sides and headcaps; gauffered silver head edge, sewn endbands; doublure light beige Roma paper, flyleaf black Bugra paper. Drop-back box with leather-bound spine and title embossed in gold.
About the content:
Friedrich Dürrenmatt: Der Besuch der alten Dame
With 20 original colour lithographs by Hans Falk. Copy no 118 of 149 on Vélin Rives. André and Pierre Gonin, Lausanne, 1964.
In his classic The Visit, Dürrenmatt reveals how one can get almost anything with money. The tragicomic play depicts how a group of citizens in Güllen allow themselves to be bribed with money by just one person, the very wealthy old lady who is visiting the town. By bribery, she can take revenge on her former lover, Alfred Ill, who had ignobly abandoned her.
About the artist: Hugo Peller, the son of a master bookbinder, was born in 1917 in Solothurn, where he began his bookbinding apprenticeship in 1934. Even then, he was interested in artisan craftwork. After his apprenticeship, he worked abroad in Strasbourg. After active service in the Second World War, the renowned Swiss bookbinder Altermatt helped him to find work and training in Paris. At the École Estienne, he was able to significantly broaden his skills in binding techniques, gilding, and decoration with distinguished teachers. Back in his studio in Solothurn in 1946, he benefited from the intensive and enriching cooperation with the bibliophilic association Vereinigung Oltner Bücherfreunde. From 1946 to 1967, he also worked as a specialist teacher at the Solothurn Trade School and taught various evening classes. From 1955, he was a member of the association MDE – Meister der Einbandkunst, where he also served on the board; he also gave gilding courses.
Following the bankruptcy of Joseph Stemmle, Hugo Peller was appointed as the new head of the Centro del libro in Ascona in 1978.
