About the content:
Half-fringed binding Light brown marocco leather spine, blind-stamped long title on smooth spine, coloured paper cover with greenish veluten and floral pattern over marbled ground, narrow blind line along the cover, greenish coloured headband, hand-stitched endpapers, yellowish endpapers throughout.
About the cover:
Ryunosuke Akutagawa: Rashomon
With drawings by Werner Klemke Diogenes Verlag AG, Zurich 1966 Ten novellas translated from the Japanese by Jürgen Berndt with a foreword by Elisabeth Schnack.
About the artist: Born into an old Zurich bookbinding family, Jean-Pierre Spetzler completed an apprenticeship with Thorvald Henningsen, one of the leading masters of the art of binding, who had a lasting influence on Spetzler's enjoyment of the profession.
From 1954, he was trained as a hand gilder by Prof Mondage at the École Estienne in Paris. He subsequently worked as a hand gilder in Geneva before acquiring a broad general knowledge by attending the Zurich School of Arts and Crafts. In 1957, his teacher Henningsen brought him into the studio at Napfgasse 4 as his closest colleague. After Josef Stemmle took over the workshop in 1972, he became its manager, initially still at Napfgasse, later at Hardturmstrasse.
