About the cover:

Full-grain binding Red buffalo leather, decoration on the front and back cover in the form of punched holes and numerous overlays and inlays of different types of leather, leather shapes and leather colours. Black embossed title on front cover as part of the decoration. Author and illustrator embossed in black on smooth spine, natural cut, hand-stitched capital, bord-à-bord mirror in black, smooth and shiny cowhide, flyleaf in black suede, chemise with spine and splint in the same red-orange leather, cover in wine-red Linson, lined in black suede, black embossed spine, slipcase leather-bound and covered in wine-red Linson.

About the content:

Max Jacob: Chronique des temps héroïques

Illustrated by Picasso: 1 black lithograph for the frontispiece, 2 colour lithographs for the cover, 3 etchings and 24 woodcuts in the text.

No. 12 of 170 copies on vergé du Montval, all copies individually signed by Picasso

Louis Broder éditeur, Paris 1956

About the artist: Even as a child, Monique Mathieu felt a fascination for paper and its feel. Her mother was an amateur bookbinder. After studying art history, she learnt how to bind books and opened her own studio in Paris in 1973. Her designs are inspired by nature or abstract letter forms. An attractive tactility develops with reliefs, indentations and incisions. ‘Calm boldness’ and ‘poetic imagination’ have brought Monique Mathieu to the forefront of French bookbinding art. The appeal of the book in the simplicity of its physical elements is coupled with her vivid sense of poetry and painting.

Her marriage to the poet André Frénaud (1907-1993) further fertilised this inclination. Today she works as a poetry publisher herself.