Browse Similar Items
OPERA OMNIA.
(Paris: [Printed by Didot le jeune for] A. Sautelet, 1828). 75 x 46 mm. (2 7/8 x 1 3/4"). viii, 229 pp.Revised by Filon.
LOVELY CONTEMPORARY GREEN STRAIGHT-GRAIN MOROCCO, GILT, BY THOUVENIN (stamp-signed at foot of spine), covers with lyre centerpiece, palmette cornerpieces sprouting volutes and flowers, raised bands, spine compartments with large floral centerpieces in pointillé tooling, circlets and dots at corners, gilt lettering, doublures and endleaves of intricately gilt-stamped mahogany-colored heavy paper with a glossy finish, all edges gilt. Housed in a silk-lined red marbled paper dust jacket and the original pull-off box by Thouvenin, with brown straight-grain morocco over faux marbled calf paper boards, the edges with marbling to resemble a text block (bottom panel replaced).
A Large(!) Paper Copy. Printed in the 2.5-point type of Henri Didot the elder. Inlaid paper slip inscribed in ink "Property of" followed by address stamp of bibliophile Paul Hirsch of Cambridge. Bondy, pp. 91-2; Spielmann 202; Grolier Club, A Short List of Microscopic Books (1907), p. 127; Brunet III, 324. A breath of faint foxing to opening leaves, but A SPLENDID COPY, clean and fresh internally with remarkably wide margins, and IN A PRISTINE BINDING.
This is a superb copy of what the Grolier Club exhibition catalogue called "a true masterpiece of printing," offered here in an exquisite binding by one of the great bookbinders of the period. According to Spielmann, this petite edition of Horace is "one of the typographical wonders and an unsurpassed feat as far as minuteness and beauty of type is concerned." Containing a brief life of the poet, followed by his Odes, Epodes, Satires, Epistles, and "On the Art of Poetry," the book is printed in what Spielmann calls the "miraculously small and exceptionally clear and beautiful" 2.5-point type created by Henri Didot of the famous Parisian printing dynasty. According to Bondy, "Didot's type is of great beauty and amazing clarity. Bigmore & Wyman write in their Bibliography of Printing I, 177: 'This fount was a high achievement of the typefounder's art. The minuteness was such that the types could not be cast in the ordinary way; hence Henri Didot (1765-1852) invented a special apparatus, to which he gave the name of polyamatype, and by means of which they were cast, a hundred letters at a time.'" The Didot firm printed the book with margins so wide that Bondy considers this a Large Paper Copy. Bondy further noted that all of the copies he'd encountered "had fine bindings of great beauty in contemporary red or green morocco," and ours is no exception. The beautifully gilt green morocco is the work of Joseph Thouvenin, the eldest of three bookbinder brothers. In "La Reliure de la XIXe Siècle," Henri Beraldi names Simier, Purgold, and Thouvenin the triumvirate of binders who ruled the French Restoration (1815-40), a period he considered "one of the grand epochs of French bookbinding." Of those three, he tells us Thouvenin (1779-1834) stood out as "one of the most famous names in bookbinding." He was the gifted pupil of Bozerian, the leading French binder of the late 18th and early 19th century, and he was viewed as a demi-god by his contemporaries, who claimed he must have been instructed and guided by Minerva, the goddess of craftsmen. He established his workshop in 1814, and swiftly became one of the most successful and in-demand binders in Paris. The very small, very delicate pointillé flowers on the spine seem surely to have required divine guidance of the artisan's hand, and the cover decoration is perfectly in proportion to the size, never overwhelming the book. Thouvenin also created a "faux book" pull-off box that has kept the volume in immaculate condition for nearly two centuries. This tiny treasure was once owned by renowned German-born bibliophile Paul Hirsch (1881-1951), who began collecting books in the 1890s and had, by 1936, assembled the greatest music library in Europe. When Hitler came to power, the Jewish Hirsch turned to his friend Edward Dent, Cambridge professor of music, for assistance in getting his family and his books out of Germany, on the pretext of loaning the collection to Cambridge University. A slip of paper stamped with Hirsch's name and address at 10 Adams Road, Cambridge, is laid in here in lieu of a bookplate, as Hirsch's engraved ex-libris was at least twice as large as this volume. (ST21169)
Price: $4,000.00