About the cover:

Full-grain binding Brown buffalo leather, decoration on front and back cover in art deco style with horizontal and vertical surfaces made of various materials such as applied dark purple maroquin leather, inlaid cream-coloured decorative leather, inlaid sapele mahogany veneer, inlaid reddish green Samenuri fish leather (stingray); above several fine and two thick gold lines; smooth spine with gold title.

Gilt edges on three sides, hand-stitched capital; mirror and flyleaf of fawn-brown velour material.

Half-leather chemise with buffalo leather, brown elephant skin paper cover, lined with fawn-brown velour material; slipcase with leather-bound opening and covered with brown elephant skin paper.

About the content:

F.-L. Schmied: Le Livre de la Vérité de Parole

Transcription of the Egyptian text by J.-C. Mardrus

Ex. No. 93 of 150 Ex.

About the artist: Alain Devauchelle took over the family workshop, the last complete Parisian workshop where several of the “Meilleurs Ouvriers de France” (Best Craftsmen of France) work, in 1990. They create modern bindings as well as restore, clean and copy antique decorations.

Characterised by a seductive elegance, Alain Devauchelle’s work is primarily characterised by a keen interest in construction, rooted in Cubism and Art Deco. His books are exhibited all over the world and showed two characteristic features from early on. First, the use of the rarest and most precious skins available; second, the use of the letter as the basis of the book design, which, like his colleagues Pierre-Lucien Martin, Michel Richard and François Brindeau, the artist had learned at the École Estienne.

The master gilder Yvon Bramante worked alongside Alain Devauchelle. At the end of the 1990s and in the first decade of the new millennium, Devauchelle received specific bibliophile commissions from the Librairie Les Argonautes in Paris, where he organised five solo exhibitions, at least three of which have been catalogued.

The accidental death of the bookbinder in 2011 sadly ended a highly acclaimed career.