André and Pierre Gonin, Lausanne 1980

(limited edition. No. 27 / 135)

360 x 315 x 33 mm

now to be found in the collection:

Burkhardt, CH

Full leather binding in ox red goatskin with grey sewn silk headbands, leather joints, and silver coloured bord-à-bord doublures and yellow flyleaves. The book is housed in a chemise and lives in a slipcase.

The book’s design is a contrast of free flowing abstract organic shapes and short horizontal lines. It is tooled by hand and executed with two shades of metallic foil, nine shades of colour pigment foil (2x blue, 3x green, 3x cream, and white). The title runs up the spine in letter groups of three (and one) and is tooled in matt silver. The chemise is covered with ox red leather and inlaid mosaic centrepieces of yellow and dusk rose coloured paper, and lined on the inside with grey Alcantara. The title is tooled with green pigment foil. The slipcase is covered in green paper inlaid with a centre band of yellow paper and lined with yellow Alcantara. All papers used are hand-dyed.

‘Liebesspiegel’ (Love’s Mirror) is a collection of love poems by the Swiss sculptor and glass-artist Albert Oesch who died at the age of twenty-nine in 1936. In his fervent declarations of love and admiration, he often draws on comparison with nature: the gurgling of a brook, the dark depths of a lake, a tide, roses and forests, nymphs and fauns, snakes and swans… I drew inspiration of this whirlwind of impressions, but as he so ardently jumps from one to the other, I found it called for some cool, and so I juxtaposed this flurry with the unphased calm of passing clouds.

bound 2020