The Collections: Guide to the Collections: Fine Printing & Binding
Resources
The Fine Art of British Bookbinding [online exhibition]
Exhibition catalogues that survey the collection include:
![Guillaume Apollinaire. Si je mourais la-bas; bois origineaux de Georges Braque [Paris, 1962].](../../images/livrepq2601p6s56b.jpg)
Livres d'artiste
Modern artists and writers have often collaborated on books in which text and image bear equal weight. Because these books utilize graphic techniques that allow the illustrations to stand as original works of art in their own right, almost every major artist in our century has been involved in their production, including Picasso, Braque, Matisse, Kokoschka, and Miro, to name only a few. The resulting books are often stunning examples of art and typography. Since the early 1970s the Lilly Library has been acquiring significant examples of this new genre. The dominant role of the French in the development of the illustrated book on our century is indicated by the preponderance of French examples of the genre in the Lilly Library.
- Max Jacob's Saint Matorel with original etchings by Pablo Picasso (1911)
- Blaise Cendrar's La Fin du monde with stencilled designs by Fernand Léger (1919); the colored stencils combine both Cubist and Dada elements and mark the book as a typical product of the literary and artistic avant-garde of its time.
- Oskar Kokoschka's Der gefesselte Columbus [Columbus in Chains] with 12 lithographs by Kokoschka (1921)
- In the United States, the Limited Editions club of George Macy produced Aristophanes' Lysistrata, with illustrations by Picasso (1934) and James Joyces's Ulysses, illustrated by Matisse (1935).
- Guillaume Apollinare's Si je mourais la-bas [If I Die Over There] with 19 woodcuts by George Braque (1962)
- Samuel Beckett's Fizzles: five prose fragments accompanied by 33 original etchings by Jasper Johns (1976)
Since 1945 the Lilly Library's livres d'artiste holdings include major works by such artists as Yves Tanguy, Joan Miro, Georges Braque, Max Ernst, Alberto Giacometti, and Jean Arp.
Fine bindings
As important as the revival of fine printing and illustration has been an equally revolutionary development in 20th century binding. Today, through the efforts of such pioneers and Pierre Legrain, Paul Bonet, and Edgar Mansfield, fine binding has achieved the status of an expressive art form in its own right. No longer simply decorative, a fine binding bears an intimate relationship to the text itself.
The Lilly Library's British bookbindings are of particular interest and significance. They were commissioned in 1972 from twenty-three leading artists and craftsmen in Great Britain and the results were spectacular. The range of techniques and aesthetic effects defy categorization, but the spectrum serves as a basis for the study of the best in contemporary fine binding.
The collection also includes one of Philip Smith's finest works, a binding for the English language Cranach Presse edition of Hamlet involving multi-colored feathered onlays and maril.
Other major additions to the Lilly collection of contemporary fine bindings are also examples of livres d'artiste:
- The Rime of the Ancient Mariner with engravings by David Jones (1929)
- Cranach Presse Eclogues of Vergil with woodcuts by Maillol (1928)
- Mérimée's Carmen with 38 engravings by Picasso (1949)
While the Lilly Library does not aggressively collect private press books, livres d'artiste, or fine bindings, its holdings are worthy of study by anyone interested in 20th century book arts and graphic design.
The online exhibition The Fine Art of British Bookbinding showcases a few of the Library's British bookbindings.
Related exhibition catalogues include:
- XXIV. Beyond Illustration: The Livres d'Artiste in the Twentieth Century
- XXVII. British Bookbinding Today
- XLVI. Changing Images: Nineteenth-Century British Book Illustration
To purchase exhibition catalogues, see information on the Lilly Library's Publications. To search the Library's catalog and other finding aids, see the Collections page.
Top: Guillaume Apollinaire. Si je mourais la-bas; bois origineaux de Georges Braque [Paris, 1962].
