Programmed on a Jacquard Loom and Woven on Silk
Livre de prières tissé d'après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVIe siècle.
Lyon: [A. Roux], 1886.
Price: $37,500.00
About the item
First and only edition, one of 50 or 60 copies produced. Text and ornamental borders and illustrations, woven from designs by R. P. J. Hervier in black and pale grey silk, 25 leaves, with matching blank leaves at front and back. 8vo. Full dark brown levant in jansenist style, blue morocco doublures gilt with inlaid purple fleurs de lys, burgundy moire flyleaves, a.e.g. by J. Kauffmann-Petit & Maillard. Bookplates of Phoebe A. D. Boyle; book label of the Vicomte de Lacroix-Laval; Justin C. Turner (loose bookplate). Faintest traces of rubbing. Fine, in morocco backed slipcase and cloth wrapper. Vicaire V, 342.
Item #375214
"Ce livre est une oeuvre très remarquable comme exécution et comme choix de gravures, de lettres ornées et des encadrements. C'est une tentative extrêmement originale, et dont la réussite et la perfection constituent une oeuvre unique et en font le plus grand honneur au fabricant de lyon qui a entrepris cette immense tâche" — Paul Marais, Bulletin du bibliophile, 1889
This book, produced over a two-year period, is entirely woven on a programmable Jacquard loom, with a dark text and soft grey background. Finely bound in a contemporary somber jansenist style, opening to elaborately gilt doublures and the remarkable visual effect of the woven floral borders, miniatures, and text. At once both a product of the peak industrialization of the silk industry and a retrospective vision of the book arts of the late mediaeval and early modern period. The punch cards used to set the loom are also a direct precursor of the punch cards which initiated the computer revolution of the twentieth century.
A SPECTACULAR EXAMPLE OF THE ART OF THE BOOK.
