Les Contes de Perrault
Original title: Les Contes de Perrault
kurzbeschreibung
This binding design was made for the 1864 edition of "Les Contes de Perrault": a red cover covered in gold ornament, with Gustave Doré named as its designer. Nothing is known about the technique used; the object measures 44.2 × 33.1 × 4 cm.
Description
The saturated red strikes you first, and the gold tooling rises out of it, drawing the eye across the surface. An oval gold panel at the centre carries the title "Les Contes de Perrault" along with the line "Compositions de Gustave Doré". Entwined flowers and scrolling vines run around it, framing the whole lid and playing about the central field. The bright gold stands out sharply against the coloured ground.
Context
In 1864 "Les Contes de Perrault" appeared, a collection of Charles Perrault's well-known tales, among them "Little Red Riding Hood" and "Sleeping Beauty". Gustave Doré, one of the most respected French illustrators of the nineteenth century, supplied the pictures. The elaborate binding says a good deal about the standing that Doré's work and the fairy-tale collection were given in the book trade of the period.
Impact
Deep red meets brilliant gold, so the book feels like a precious object. The evenly spaced ornaments and the medallion at the centre give the whole a ceremonial, formal character. The tales are thus given a worthy setting that presents them as something of value.
Technique
How exactly the work was done cannot be determined; what is visible, however, is elaborate gold tooling on red binding material. The delicate lines and floral scrolls point to careful craftsmanship of the kind usual for sumptuous nineteenth-century editions.
AI-generated description text
Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art · Public Domain (CC0 1.0)