Binding

Binding is not merely the book's dress: it also constitutes its own intrinsic value, independent of the text it protects. Leather, decoration, gilding and the binder's signature together compose a material history running from the 16th to the 20th century, in which the customs of an era, the taste of an owner or the ambition of a workshop can be read. This theme brings together the great families of leathers and styles — morocco, calf, vellum, box calf, sheepskin, shagreen — as well as armorial bindings and signed or artistic bindings, where condition, the quality of the leather and the fineness of the work constitute the whole of the bibliophilic interest.