About the cover:
Green marocco leather, mirror-symmetrically arranged on both covers, curved forms in green, red and light leather overlay, accompanied by long and short gold lines, hand-gilt title on smooth spine, gilt inner edges, gilt edges, hand-stitched endpapers, vellum leather endpapers, slipcase covered with leather edges and coloured paper.
About the content:
André Malraux: La Tentation de l'Occident
Ex. No. 52 of 83, 50 of which on Vélin pur fil Lafuma,
Édition Bernard Grasset, Paris, 1926 When he published ‘The Temptation of the West’ in 1926, Malraux was only 24 years old, but he was already fascinated by Asian cultures, especially China. In this book, he imagines a correspondence between two intellectuals, a Frenchman and a Chinese man, two respective representatives of the West and the East, who
About the artists: Marcellin Semet, born in 1894, completed an apprenticeship as a bookbinder with Chambolle-Duru during the First World War. His later partner, Georges Plumelle, born in 1902, was trained by the gilder Pagnier and later by Maylander. The two met after the war in Gruel's workshop.
In 1925, they took over the Pinardon company together. They quickly gained a reputation for combining first-class bookbinding skills with a very lively, modernist formal vocabulary. The best covers by Semet & Plumelle feature flowing lines or arabesques on a delicate two- or three-colour ground. Their style remained unchanged for years. Semet retired to the south of France in 1955, Plumelle continued to work alone until 1980.
