LIMOUSIN, Hélène, bookbinder. SCHELER, Lucien. BALTAZAR, Julius. ~ Le Voyant à Raoul Ubac.
No. 28 of 44 copies, signed by the author and illustrator. Embossed drypoint engraving by Baltazar One of 37 copies printed on Richard de Bas paper in a unique binding by Hélène Limousin made in 2022, signed on the lower doublure, the sides are made of bone which has been articulated so that the covers are flexible, the bone has been painted and engraved in an abstract pattern including semicircles and dots, spine of blue calf, titled in white and gilt, reverse calf doublures. Housed in the original blue calf backed chemise with white and gilt lettering on the spine and blue calf edged slicpase lined with yellow paper and with onlaid yellow paper circles.
With a unique painted presentation page inscribed to the French bookbinder Claude Honnelaitre from the author and illustrator “en souvenir d’Ubac’, dated 1986. Baltazar is a well known Parisian artist and engraver who had a great friendship with Raoul Ubac. The Bibliotheca Wittockiana had a large retrospective of his work in the 1980s and in the 1990s he created a massive masterpiece which was exhibited literally on the floor of the Champs-Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe to the roundabout. Scheler was a French writer, poet, publisher and bookseller who was an important part of the literary resistance against Nazism.
Hélène Limousin graduated with honours from the Ecole Estienne in 1999. She then set up in Cholet in 2003 as a bookbinder and gilder. She is very inventive and developed some fascinated new techniques in binding including this articulated technique with bone and working leathers, papers and other materials to adapt to the contents of the books. I first found her work at a Paris book fair a few years ago and am fascinated by the way she keeps adapting and developing her techniques and skills. Her work is sensuous and exquisite and always sensitive to the texts and artists’ printings that she likes to bind. These articulated bindings are remarkable and incredibly satisfying to hold and manoeuvre.