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Re: "amateur" bindings

From: <ssd~at~u-bordeaux2.fr>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 17:24:52 +0100
To: Jules Verne Forum <jvf~at~math.technion.ac.il>
Cc: bjava <sommer~at~smrn.com>

Hi all,

BW wrote :
>Hetzel's paper was not of the highest quality,
As JM Margot pointed it out, this depends on what kind of edition you're
refering to. Some of Jules Verne editions have hight quality paper, even if,
with the age, some brown stains are appearing on some pages (because of the
lead, used to make paper whiter).

>so it seems unlikely that a discriminating
>collector would have spent money binding these books together.
I have in my own collection some beautiful "amateur" bindings. In some of
them, two titles are matched together, but this matching is not the same
than the editor's usual double volumes matching.
Also consider that the binding profession was quite usual during the XIXth
century, and prices cheaper than nowadays.
Some of these "amateur" bindings still have -inside the book- a sticker
showing the name of the binder (an artisan) and his adress. Some of these
bindings also have initials of the XIXth century's owner written on the spine.

"Amateur" binding's world is very large. I have sometimes been surprised to
see very ordinary paper-printed novels (as Alexandre Dumas newspaper
publications) bound with very good quality covers (leather, gilt decorations
on the spine, and so on).
Some of these bindings were obviously from the XIXth century.

>And now the last element : some bound in-8 volumes are unique. It means
>that such volume has a unique binding. Sometimes a french binder came to
>Hetzel suggesting him a new binding and Hetzel gave him just the book
>(or books) without any cover, asking the binder to do the sample of his
>new binding. Such bindings were sold in Paris in JV auctions at the
>"Hotel Drouot" since 1978 (when the JV binding market became to be
>organized) and their description can be found in the auctions'
>catalogs.
Aha ! Jean-Michel, I would be truly interested in details about this.
Are you refering to some rare covers (already mentionned in the Bottin,
sometimes as editor's projects) as the simple volume types known as "Deux
bouquets de roses" or "Aux initiales avec grecque". Or the double volume
types known as "A la grenade" or "A la sphere armillaire" ?
Or is this something I never heard about before!?
(8-0 [surprise!]

Fabien Raynaut
Received on Wed 18 Mar 1998 - 18:27:10 IST

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