About the cover:

Full-grain binding Full leather binding in ox red goatskin with grey sewn silk headbands, leather joints, and silver coloured bord-à-bord doublures and yellow flyleaves. The book is housed in a chemise and lives in a slipcase.

The book’s design is a contrast of free flowing abstract organic shapes and short horizontal lines. It is tooled by hand and executed with two shades of metallic foil, nine shades of colour pigment foil (2x blue, 3x green, 3x cream, and white). The title runs up the spine in letter groups of three (and one) and is tooled in matt silver. The chemise is covered with ox red leather and inlaid mosaic centrepieces of yellow and dusk rose coloured paper, and lined on the inside with grey Alcantara. The title is tooled with green pigment foil. The slipcase is covered in green paper inlaid with a centre band of yellow paper and lined with yellow Alcantara. All papers used are hand-dyed.

About the content:

Albert Oesch: Mirror of Love

EA with 13 original etchings by Hans Erni

Ex. No. 27 of 135 on handmade paper

André and Pierre Gonin, Lausanne 1979 ‘Liebesspiegel’ (Love’s Mirror) is a collection of love poems by the Swiss sculptor and glass-artist Albert Oesch who died at the age of twenty-nine in 1936. In his fervent declarations of love and admiration, he often draws on comparison with nature: the gurgling of a brook, the dark depths of a lake, a tide, roses and forests, nymphs and fauns, snakes and swans… I drew inspiration of this whirlwind of impressions, but as he so ardently jumps from one to the other, I found it called for some cool, and so I juxtaposed this flurry with the unphased calm of passing clouds.

About the artist: Annette Friedrich completed her bookbinding apprenticeship in Leipzig and then studied book concept art at the Burg Giebichenstein Art Academy in Halle. In 2005 she founded her own ‘fine bindings’ studio in London, where she developed her own design signature and was able to produce work for numerous libraries. She also worked in book restoration and curated exhibitions. As an active member of the Desinger Bookbinders association, she was editor-in-chief of the English trade journal The New Bookbinder for several years.

In 2020, she moved back to Germany, where she runs the ‘Goldene Esel’ studio for fine binding and book restoration in Halle together with Rita Lass.

Quote: ‘I think in sounds that unfold, that vibrate, enrich each other and together form a whole.’