Leather and lace
Dec 4th, 2012 by houghtonmodern
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.
Today we feature two twentieth-century French erotic novels: Pauline Réage’s Histoire d’O and Jean Lorrain’s Le maison Philibert, both extravagantly bound by the French binder Alain Devauchelle. On the front cover of Histoire d’O, tessellations of brightly dyed calf and morocco panels form a kaleidoscopic letter O. The binding of Le maison Philibert, with its glossy pink snakeskin-textured calf, its panels of black lace and foil-stamped leather, and the rose suede lining its endpapers and slipcase, can only be described as striking.
Jean Lorrain. Le maison Philibert. Paris: Librairie Universelle, 1904. FC8.L8938.904m.
Pauline Reage. Histoire d’O. A Sceaux: Chez Jean-Jacques Pauvert, 1954. PQ2635.E15H5 1954x
Thanks to rare book cataloger Ryan Wheeler for contributing this post.
