About the binding:
Full leather bindings Brown goatskin; three raised bands with gold-tooled panels and ornaments; gold-tooled frames on both cover boards, initials “AP” with branch and sword in the centre of the front cover board; gilt head edge, sewn silk endbands; gold-tooled lines on the squares; endpapers light grey Ingres paper. Each volume in leather-edged slipcase covered with dark blue Ingres paper.
About the content:
Alexander Puschkin:
1. Die Reise nach Erzerum [1829–1835]
2. Briefe [1816-1837]
3. Pique Dame [und Erzählungen, 1830]
4. Hauptmannstochter [1836]
Bühl-Verlag, Herrliberg, 1944 and 1945. Alexander Pushkin was born in Moscow in 1799. He is still regarded today as the greatest Russian poet, far ahead of Tolstoy and others. Until Napoleon’s invasion of Moscow in 1812, the Russian upper class spoke French. Pushkin paved the way for Russian-language literature and created a narrative style that mixed drama, romance, and satire. This style has been inextricably linked with Russian literature ever since. In 1837, he was fatally injured in a duel with his sister-in-law’s husband.
About the artist: Friedhold Morf served his apprenticeship as a bookbinder from 1916 to 1919, then studied at several schools for arts and crafts, first at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich, in 1921 at the Staatliche Kunstgewerbeschule in Munich under F.H. Ehmcke, and in 1922 at the Buchbinder-Fachschule in Berlin. After receiving his master’s certificate in Munich, he taught at the Staatsschule für Angewandte Kunst (the former Kunstgewerbeschule) in Munich until the National Socialist Party came to power in 1933.
He then was head of the bookbinding class at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Zurich until his early death in 1960. He wrote acclaimed books on bookbinding, including “Der Bucheinband” in 1916 and “Papparbeit und Bucheinband” in 1930.
