About the cover:

Full-grain binding Leporello bound on folds. Turquoise buffalo leather, with light brown and black overlays of snake and other partly tattered leathers, accentuated with dotted semés, turquoise title ‘à la chinoise’ on three brown leather strips, natural cut, hand-stitched silk capital, mirror with similar leather decoration, black suede endpapers, half-leather chemise of the same leather, lined with turquoise suede, black Linson cover, black embossed spine title, leather-bound slipcase covered with black Linson.

Contents: Leporello booklet hung on folds.

Turquoise buffalo leather, with light brown and black overlays of snake and other partly turquoise buffalo leather, with light brown and black overlays of snake and other partly tattered leathers, accentuated with dotted semés, turquoise title ‘à la chinoise’ on three brown leather strips, natural cut, hand-stitched silk capital, mirror with similar leather decoration, black suede endpapers, half-leather chemise of the same leather, lined with turquoise suede, black Linson cover, black embossed spine title, leather-bound slipcase covered with black Linson.

About the content:

Lucien Scheler: Il suffirait

With colour etchings, relief embossings and collages by Bertrand Dorny

Ex. No. 72 of 85 of the limited original edition signed by author and artist Edition Claude Blaizot, Paris 1987

A short and rather macabre text on just two pages is about the sand that ‘sandblasts’ the rocks in the dry and hot wind in the south of France and whips into the remains of animal bones lying around.

Humans lack warmth and a hug.

About the artist: Even as a child, Monique Mathieu felt a fascination for paper and its feel. Her mother was an amateur bookbinder. After studying art history, she learnt how to bind books and opened her own studio in Paris in 1973. Her designs are inspired by nature or abstract letter forms. An attractive tactility develops with reliefs, indentations and incisions. ‘Calm boldness’ and ‘poetic imagination’ have brought Monique Mathieu to the forefront of French bookbinding art. The appeal of the book in the simplicity of its physical elements is coupled with her vivid sense of poetry and painting.

Her marriage to the poet André Frénaud (1907-1993) further fertilised this inclination. Today she works as a poetry publisher herself.