Studio: international art (24.1902)

Paul Kersten's Leather Work

BOOKBINDING BY P. KERSTEN

covers of the bouqains of the seventeenth century,
Mr. Kersten has to admit that the eighteenth
century produced nothing but copies of French
bindings; and, further, that if German bindings
attracted any attention in the course of the
nineteenth century, soon after 1840, it was solely
due to the binders, Purgold and Trantz, men of
German origin, living in Paris, and to Kalthoefer
and Zaehnsdorff, who were established in London.
As a matter of fact, try as one will, it is impossible
to deny that Germany, during the centuries in
question, was very poor as regards art binders, and
this fact makes its recent efforts to achieve celebrity
in this direction all the more meritorious. Mr.
Paul Kersten had few predecessors, and when he
talks of Trantz and Kalthoefer he must mistake the
facts connected with these artists. They did
no work "at home"—that is, in Germany—but
were " outsiders," who cannot be taken into
account on the present occasion. Mr. Kersten
himself is one of the foremost German exponents
of his art, and he may without vanity be proud of
the eminent position he holds.

I have not had the opportunity of handling any
of the volumes clothed by Mr. Paul Kersten, but
have simply seen them in show-cases or in
photographs, and on that account am somewhat
ill-qualified to discuss them from the point of view
of workmanship. Careful bibliophiles will be
116

able to appreciate all the various points which
constitute fine binding, but that which demands
our attention here is rather the work of the
decorator and the gilder, and here we find
remarkable achievement—ornamentation at once
sober and varied, admirable in taste and style.

I have before me now in reproduction a large
number of bindings executed from the unpublished
designs of Mr. Paul Kersten, and not one can I
find in which there is anything defective in the com-
position or which lacks harmony of ensemble. In
each case the skilful gilder has sought to complete
a decorative theme with great simplicity and breadth
of touch, and everywhere he has succeeded in
creating a striking field of decoration, without
having recourse to loud effects or exaggeration of
any sort.

Look at some of the reproductions accompanying
this text—at the "Julius" of Count Tolstoi (p. 115),
for example, with its delicate, curved, parallel lines,
forming a heart-shaped figure, leaving space for the
title in graceful palm-leaves ; or at " L'Art dans la
Decoration exterieure des Livres" (p. 114), in which
the sides and the back of the book are, as it were,
involved in a wide, spider-like web of beautiful
threads; or,again, at the "Paris" (p. 115) so minutely

BOOKBINDING BY P. KERSTEN