About the binding:

Full leather binding Rust-orange Oasis goatskin; five markedly raised bands, gold-tooled title in the second and the fifth compartment; a group of four large, slightly deformed gold-tooled circles on the front and back cover boards (Narcissus) from which blind-tooled lines run like rays over the spine bands (Goldmund); gold- and blind-tooled lines on the turn-ins; gilt head edge, sewn endbands; endpapers decorated paper, trimmed-out pastedowns. Slipcase chemise in half-binding style; five raised bands with gold lettering like the cover; covered with decorated paper in the same style as the book’s endpapers. Leather-edged slipcase covered with light beige Ingres paper.

About the content:

Hermann Hesse: Narziss und Goldmund

Neue Schweizer Bibliothek.

Schweizer Druck- und Verlagshaus AG, Zurich. Narcissus and Goldmund is Hesse’s most successful book in his lifetime. Published in 1930, the story, set in the Mariabronn monastery school in medieval Germany, tells of the friendship between two contrasting men. Narcissus is an ascetic novice and a thinker, while the pupil Goldmund is an artist and a man of the world. Narcissus’ solitary spirituality and his life in the monastery are only described at the beginning and the end of the book. The focus is on Goldmund’s adventures in the world and his love affairs.

About the artist: Hans Burkhardt served his apprenticeship as a bookbinder at Delachaux & Niestlé in Neuchâtel from 1962 to 1965 after graduating from Zurich Kantonsschule, the upper secondary level school. He then completed an internship with Thorvald Henningsen in Zurich from November 1966 to March 1967.

This was followed by years of training and travelling in London, Stuttgart and Minden in Germany, Rome, and Paris before he joined his parents’ bookbindery Burkhardt in Zurich in 1969. On 1 April 1973, after the bindery had been converted into a company limited by shares, he took over management and continued to develop the company. This resulted in moving to its premises in Mönchaltorf in 1985. After the very inspiring time at Henningsen, practical craftsmanship became a hobby as it had to make way for the new role as managing director of a bookbindery that produces predominantly on an industrial scale.