Bonjour cinéma

12mo of 118 pp. and (5) ff.

Half grey rubber, brown and cream rubber pieces on the boards, visible stitching on cream calfskin pieces, semi-flexible boards of Topy brand rubber sole, cream nubuck endpapers and linings, illustrated cover and spine preserved, slipcase, chemise. Binding by Jean de Gonet.

179 X 114 mm.

Epstein, Jean. Bonjour cinéma.

Paris, Éditions de la Sirène (Collection des Tracts), 1921.

First edition of this tribute to Art Nouveau.

This first book devoted to cinema by Jean Epstein, director and theorist of the seventh art, is a collection of reflections and poems illustrated off-text with portraits of Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and others, compositions based on capital letters, reproductions of posters, repeated words and announcements addressed to readers, staged by Claude Dalbanne, in a dynamic sequence meant to evoke the movement of cinematography.

Jean Epstein (1897-1953) was not only a pioneer of cinema but also the author of a significant theoretical body of work, which began as early as 1921 with the publication of this essay.

“Rather than paper, used only occasionally, Jean de Gonet often used, from 1983 on, rubber, and more specifically the ‘Topy’ brand, for the covers of the simplest bindings” (Fabienne Le Bars, Jean de Gonet relieur, BnF, 2013, No. 40.- Le Bars, Jean de Gonet, Catalogue raisonné, II, No. 0342.)

A major figure in art bookbinding over the last thirty years, Jean de Gonet quickly established himself in complete departure from the methods and ornamentation of so-called designer bindings. Exposing what is traditionally covered (the stitching, the fastenings), concentrating his interventions on the fragile points of a binding, he employed a different technical approach, transforming the constraints of his art into a new visual language. His passion for materials (leather, but also wood, carbon fiber, and even rubber soles…), his mastery of color, the implementation of subtle processes that play on tactile sensations, and refined devices that highlight the flexibility of a binding’s covers, make him an incomparable artist, copied and imitated by both amateurs and professionals. Instantly recognizable, his creations combine the beauty of worked materials with the tension of deliberately wrought forms.

He revolutionized bookbinding; he gave it a timeless contemporaneity, guided by certain constraints, desires, challenges, but above all, he says, by his “ability to react to a pre-established, coded, extremely restricted situation—restricted not by the binders but by the commissioners.”

Restoring suppleness to the book block that the 19th century had corseted and stiffened, by a technique he developed, opened up unsuspected horizons and offered him the freedom to imagine and design his creations from materials (wood, MDF, shagreen, Topy rubber…) hitherto unimaginable.

The evident beauty of Jean de Gonet’s bindings, their refined, daring, and how often deceptively harmonious qualities, find their essence in the work of the material, the color, the presentation of the material itself. Each piece is unique” (C. Coste).

Precious rubber binding by Jean de Gonet.