Antiquarian books and antiquarian collections evoke first and foremost row upon row of elegantly bound volumes and sets. French antiquarian works are some of the richest and most valuable in the world. Book binding has preserved the written word for centuries and it is, in great part, due to bookbinding that many great works have survived to this day.
The nature of bookbinding quickly evolved beyond its initial protective function. Distinction became requisite and decorative traits and flourishes grew around the pages. Long before bookplates made their appearances in personal collections, royal motifs began to adorn the spines of princely tomes. For this reason we are today capable of harvesting collections around certain themes and decorative tendencies. A book bound in the sixteenth century bears little resemblance to one published and circulated in the nineteenth. Book bindings from the seventeenth and eighteenth century speak different languages -their decorative motifs inflect a variety of dialect.
The strong, receding columns of velum bound volumes; the tactile trance of treated leather tombs; the subtle and subdued play of texture and color along discreet, endless shelves are but fragments of the vast and diverse world of bindings. A physician’s medical volumes dwarfs a collection of poetic works in its breadth and austerity -the two are as beautiful in their own right as they are distinct. A quiet, rural bookcase, its contents of novels and short stories slumbering in peaceful disorder evokes sentiments to match the grandiose nature of the great libraries with their ranks of official tracts and encyclopedias.
Antiquarian covers are a universe onto themselves, capable of inspiring the soul with the same intensity as the immensity of the worlds contained within them.