About the binding:

Full leather binding Ochre-coloured Morocco goatskin; four raised bands, gold-tooled decoration on spine, gold-tooled title in the second and the fourth compartment; gold tooling with pallets and ornaments on both cover boards; all edges gilt, sewn endbands; doublure turquoise Morocco with a richly gilt floral border and dark red and moss-green leather onlays, silk flyleaf pasted on combed marbled paper. Leather-edged slipcase, covered with vein marble paper and lined with light-brown split leather.

About the content:

Jules Claretie: La Corde

With illustrations by Charles Jouas (frontispiece, title vignette, 13 etchings and an additional suite of proofs).

Copy no 2 of 125 for the famous bibliophile Henri Beraldi. Les Amis des Livres, Paris, 1901. The French writer Jules Claretie (1840–1913) initially worked as a journalist for Le Figaro, among others, and later distinguished himself as a theatre critic and became director of the Comédie Française. The artist Charles Jouas (1866–1942) was a remarkable, rigorous draughtsman and etcher and head of the graphics department of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts in Paris.

About the artist: Henri Marius Michel (1846–1925), son of the gilder Jean Michel (1821–1890), is considered one of the innovators of the French art of bookbinding. He received his training at the École des arts décoratifs and the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris. His works, inspired by Art Nouveau and excellently designed and executed, influenced the works of his fellow bookbinders. He acquired renown through exhibitions which earned him awards and through his two-volume book “La Reliure française” (1880) and soon was the leading bookbinder of his time.

His decoratively stylized flower ornaments were deliberately matched to the book’s content. In his workshop, he employed the best craftsmen of his time, such as Georges Cretté, who took over as Michel’s worthy successor in 1925.