Edition illustrated with 25 original burin engravings by J.-É. Laboureur, in and out of text.
Printing limited to 200 copies on vélin de Rives, this one a nominative copy for Henri Reitlinger (no. 35).
Preserved with the copy: the menu illustrated by Laboureur for the “Dîner de La Paix” of 24 March 1930.
Paul Bonet produced two bindings for this title, almost identical, the variant design consisting of an inversion of the motifs and colors on the covers. They are among the master-decorator’s first true creations, both dating from 1931. In this copy’s case, it is the second binding, which Paul Bonet entrusted to Mertens for the binding work and to the formidable gilder André Jeanne for the execution of the design — Jeanne having already worked on the first version in 1931.
The commission was carried out for the library of an important client of Bonet’s: the Argentine Carlos R. Scherrer, one of three collectors (alongside Gaffé in Brussels and Marty in Paris) who, at the outset of Bonet’s career, placed his most important commissions in terms of both number and quality. This great bibliophile’s collection was the subject of an exhibition and catalogue at the Librairie Marcel Sautier in 1963: 180 bindings, all executed between 1928 and 1939 by Bonet, were shown there, with a preface by Jules Cain and the binder himself: “the ensemble was all the more interesting in that the collector left Paul Bonet the greatest freedom of invention” (in Périodique de l’Association Internationale de Bibliophilie, 1964, p. 72).
A very fine copy.
Paul Bonet, Carnets, 138 bis.