About the cover:

Full-grain binding Light brown oasis goat French binding with smooth spine and title in blind printing and hand-gilding; slightly slanted composition on both covers with two black line bundles each made of five millimetre-wide leather strips between which an elongated form made of multi-part, multi-coloured leather overlays takes up the entire height of the cover, inner edges accentuated with slightly darker leather, endpapers in yellow laid paper. Slipcase leather-bound, covered with black paper.

About the content:

Gustave Flaubert: La Tentation de Saint Antoine

With illustrations by Odilon Redon

Ex. No. 129 from 3050

Éditions Les Peintres du Livre, Paris 1969 The ‘Temptation of St Anthony’ is a novel that was only published in its final version in Paris in 1874. It deals with a night in the life of the Egyptian hermit St Anthony, during which he is exposed to various temptations - a theme that has often been explored in European art and literature since the Middle Ages.

About the artist: Thorvald Henningsen was born in Lausanne in 1896 and completed his bookbinding apprenticeship with Konrad Häsler in Zurich from 1910 to 1914. He gained a wide range of professional experience at various workplaces in Switzerland. After qualifying as a master craftsman in 1921, he was the manager of the Schumacher bookbindery in Bern. In 1946, he took over a bookbinding workshop at Napfgasse 4 in Zurich's old town, directly above Café Schober. The years leading up to the sale of his workshop in 1972 were intense: in addition to managing his soon very renowned workshop, he taught at the arts and crafts schools in Zurich and Bern, gave evening classes for bookbinders and preparatory courses for the master craftsman's examination. He was on the board of the Cantonal Zurich Master Bookbinder Association and the Museum of Bookbinding, as well as being involved in promotional films and trade exhibitions. He became known beyond Switzerland as the author of specialist books and articles.