Studio: international art (9.1897)

Continental Bookbindings

BOOKBINDING DESIGNED BY COUNTESS SPARRE.

Helsingfors

space only permits me to mention Charles Meunier,
a follower and former fellow-student of Michel's,
who sent an interesting selection of his work ; and
Gruel, whose style- was seen to advantage in a
morocco mosaic, with a simple flower motive in the
centre of the cover, and the edges tooled in gold ;
and lastly, Raparlier, who sent some interesting,
but by no means faultless, productions, the best of
which were his plain Japanese designs, very suc-
cessfully treated.

A special word is due to the artists from Nancy,
who displayed some admirable work. The best
of them is Camille Martin, who to great technical
gifts adds artistic qualities of a high order. He
has realised that mosaic work demands a grey sur-
face in order to avoid an appearance of triviality.
The decorative methods of modern French paint-
ing, with its bold, simple lines and its charm of
colour-contrast, are in complete accord with his
ideas, and he designs the plainest possible land-
scapes in a sharp and characteristic manner, which
might almost be suitable for stained-glass windows.
They are decorative paintings translated into
leather work ; excellent and faithful productions,
which might be described as perfect, if their author
could only realise exactly what are the limitations
of the binder's art, and what its essential require-
ments.

Prouve, a colleague of Martin's, is an artist of
no mean gifts, but he quite misunderstands the

craft of binding. A good painter, doubtless, but
only half equipped as a workman. Prouve's bind-
ings are pictures pure and simple—nothing more.
R. Wiemer, another of the Nancy school, exhibited
a series of very fantastic works. In his case the
binding is treated as though it were a piece of
sculpture. One instance is a crab, almost life-size,
standing out in high relief in one of the corners;
and in his cover for Roger Marx's La Medaille, a
tin plate has been let into the binding. His cover
for Les Chauve-Souris is adorned with a pair of
bats in iron-work, on a water-colour sketch, not bad
in itself. These are merely curiosities, and have
nothing to do with bookbinding proper.

Far greater discretion was shown by Mme. A.
Vallgren, wife of the well-known artist, who sent
a selection of covers, with decorations worked in
relief by the glyptograph process, on soft leather.
The technique in these drawings is so good that
they are quite beyond reproach as such, but one
cannot think, excellent though the work may be,
that we have here a style worthy of imitation.
One of the few young artists who have devoted
themselves with success to binding is E. Belville,
who exhibited two beautiful specimens of his work,
quite primitive in technique and very pleasing in
drawing. Those binders who, while masters of

BOOKBINDING DESIGNED BY COUNTESS SPARRE.

Helsingfors
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