About the binding:

Full leather binding Black calfskin; blind-tooled title on smooth spine; subtle structure on both cover boards, created by underlaying thin, different cut pieces, which represent the landslide and whose lines are defined by blind tooling; sewn endbands; doublure edge-to-edge black-dyed Ingres paper, flyleaf red-dyed Ingres paper. Solander box with spine covered with the same black calfskin as book, remainder with black Ingres paper; lined with black velours; title embossed in silver on the spine.

About the content:

Charles Ferndinand Ramuz: Derborence

H.-L. Mermod, Lausanne, 1934. After his marriage to Thérèse, Antoine leaves his village and joins the old man Séraphin on the alp. Shortly afterwards, a landslide occurs which buries them both, along with the hamlet of Derborence. The pregnant Thérèse now has to come to terms with her widowhood.

Contrary to expectations, however, Antoine survives the landslide and manages to free himself. Two months after the natural disaster, he reappears in his village, where he is initially thought a ghost. But Antoine wants to return to the mountains to look for Séraphin. Thérèse, who knows more than he does, follows him…

About the artist: The Swiss bookbinder Jean-Luc Honegger opened his studio in Bernex GE in 1978. After further training in Paris, he taught hand gilding at the Centro del libro in Ascona. Jean-Luc Honegger infuses rare books from prestigious collections with a “new life”. His bindings can be admired at the Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Fondation Martin Bodmer in Geneva, among others. They have been exhibited several times in museums, notably in 2002 at the Museum of Art and History in Geneva. Honegger regularly participates in exhibitions in Switzerland and abroad and in competitions, including the Prix Paul Bonet in 1992. In 2009, Jean-Luc Honegger was, together with Hans Burkhardt, on the jury of the “bel libro 09” competition.