About the cover:

Full-grain binding Brown oasis goat binding with smooth spine and hand-gilt title, the mirror-symmetrical composition on both covers consisting of two curved gold lines, three blind-stamped lines and ribbons in black leather overlay was created in imitation of the illustrations by Kurt Steinel, gilt head edge, hand-stitched endpapers, endpapers of green-yellow silk, flap lining covered with the same silk and lined with fawn-coloured felt.

About the content:

Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Reineke Fuchs

With 20 lithographs by Kurt Steinel

Kumm Verlag, Offenbach 1962

Reineke Fuchs is the main character of this epic in verse and prose, whose tradition goes back to the European Middle Ages. It tells the story of how Reineke the fox, the evildoer, saves himself from all precarious situations with ingenious tall tales and selected malice and ultimately prevails against his adversaries.

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.