You have explained that the two volumes of ‘Sucre Indigène’ ‘sort of belong to each other’ what do you mean by this? The covering material of one is the flyleaf of the other, same structure, same subject.
How did this fact influence your rebinding of them? Both speak about how to resolve the problem of the English blockade so cane sugar cannot be delivered to France. Both bindings went to an exhibition to the Belgian Sugar Museum and the use of the leathers attempt to underline their sisterhood.
I notice in all the bindings you are showing that there is a distinctive fixing detail on the spines, a ‘staple’ for
want of a better word. Can you explain the presence of this ornate yet functional item? These staples are above all functional. The double sewing system gives a good opening to books - this appealed to me. First I have been using threads for the secondary sewing but as I was using gold wire on the boards of my bindings already at that time I had the idea of replacing the linen threads with gold wire. They always sit on a tiny piece of wood, so the holes of the leather are hidden. Over the time these “staples” have become a sort of a trade mark.
The book ‘Voyage Philosophique au Japon ou Conférences’ has a contextual object of a Japanese ceramic cup. You say because the ethos of ‘less is more’ was of influence. Is that a general practice influence or just relevant to this binding? It is a general practice. I try to limit decoration to the strict minimum, tending to express the atmosphere by the choice of the materials, their contrast, linking form to function.
‘Voyage Philosophique’ features a sliced leaf which looks as though it is designed to promote a user curving the page. Can you say something about this design detail? The covering leather is in one piece going from the inside to the outside, around the book and then into the back cover. When working on larger books I did not always have enough leather to do this so I started to fill in the inside of the covers with vertical strips of the material. That led to many interesting features: the strips could be of different colours and textures, the gaps in between could contribute to the design, and last but not least, the cover curves in when opened so the tension on the staples is reduced. Form and function always going hand in hand: solving one technical difficulty might bring new ideas in the form; a dreamed form needs a technical solution... and so on... and so on...
In ‘Théatre, Alex Dumas’ we see not only the aforementioned ‘staples’ but also a dowel being used on the edge of the cover. Can you explain something about it? In all of the bindings the covering leather is turned over a wooden fore-edge rod. It makes the flexible cover lie flat. It is another contemporary version of an old feature in bookbinding: the yapp edge, i.e. a 90° fold on fore-edge of the old parchment bindings’ covers. Same idea as for a piece of paper you want to make to stand: if you fold it, it becomes rigid. The parchment cover had a fold at the fore-edge so it did not warp so much. My rods do the same job. I like them so much, once for a series of small incunabulae for our national library I made the fore-edge rods in 18 carat gold, even though one cannot see much of them!
Approximately how much time did the making of each of these bindings take? From making a decision on what to do, to completion. About 20-30 hours. But the decision is sometimes only the choice of the leather and a quick sketch. For the sugar books I had the “cube” in mind, then the “glitter” of the crystal sugar. Hence the checker-board leather, the brilliants and the colour tooling on the red leather.
1 “L’alchimiste” d’Alexander Dumas (1839),
Flexible calf leather binding, with blind and gold tooling.
Original grey coloured leather peeled off with adhesive tape, gold staples at head and tail edges of spine [end bands].
2 Voyage philosophique au Japon (1788),
Flexible pigskin binding, decorated with coloured cloth aligned to the 10 gold-wire staples on the spine.
3 & 4 “Du sucre indigène — suggestions and debates of the French Parlement to avoid the consequences of the blockade of cane sugar (1833 and 1836),
Flexible grey-and-black checker motif calf leather, six brilliants inset in the front and in the back cover. Red calf-leather split flyleaf. The second one’s covering leather is the first one’s flyleaf: red calf-leather, decorated with colour-foil-tooled squares. In both bindings the covers are held to the textblock by three white gold staples.
Japanese mug.
Heaps of sugar cubes and crystal sugar.
