About the binding:

Full leather binding White, alum tanned pigskin (from the order of 1,800 skins for the special production of the 1,500 facsimile volumes of the Book of Kells); five raised bands, gold-tooled title in the second compartment; line and dot fillet tooling on both cover boards and the spine; gauffered silver head edge, two-colour sewn endbands; endpapers violet Ingres paper.

About the content:

Frédéric Mistral: Mireille (Mirèio)

Poem in 12 songs. Librairie Alphonse Lemerre, Paris, 1930. In 1859, Frédéric Mistral (1830–1914), an advocate of the Provençal language, published his most important work, Mirèio. It tells the story of a rich farmer’s daughter who fights for her love with a poor basket weaver and goes on a journey in search of divine support. This work draws on the legend of Joan of Arc and contains numerous references to rural Provençal themes from centuries past. Mirèio was honoured by the Académie Française and established Mistral's reputation. Frédéric Mistral was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1904.

About the artist: Ernst Frehner completed his bookbinding apprenticeship in Herisau in 1962. He attended courses in further training, with Thorvald Henningsen in Zurich for handcraft bookbinding, with Alfred Furler and Hans Widmer in Basel for industrial bookbinding, and with Karl Trobas in Graz for paper restoration. He received his master’s certificate in 1969. In 1971, he started as head of the artisanal workshop at the former Burkhardt AG bookbindery in Zurich, now Bubu AG in Mönchaltorf. He held this position until his retirement in 2004, winning a gold and a silver medal respectively in MfB competitions in 1984 and 1996.

During his time at Bubu, he trained a total of 25 young people as handcraft bookbinders.