E-catalogue 109: The Mystique of Vellum
The list before you takes as its inspiration Colin Franklin’s observation that “(I)n its long history even the most rational critic will agree that vellum well used has inspired extraordinary enthusiasm.” That this statement appears in our very own Mystique of Vellum certainly deepens the appeal as a guiding principle. Herein you will find books that explore the subject of printing on vellum in depth; exemplars of vellum printing, from Essex House Press's elegant panorama of English monarchic history in their Masque of the Edwards of England, to Melchior Lechter’s mystical meditation on sacred symbolism in Das Maerchen vom Sinn; and books bound in vellum—a material in which “(F)lexibility and strength were skillfully balanced,” as Ana Paula Cordeiro noted in her brief introduction to Lightweight, a celebration of the enduring binding material. In this list, you will find it both limp and stretched over boards, painted, calligraphed, and tooled in gold and palladium—the ideal blank canvas.