Voyage scolaire 1899. L’École Estienne en Belgique et dans le…

4to (272 × 180 mm), pp. 53, [3]. Printed on smooth paper, decorative borders in pale green and orange throughout, illustrations, some printed in colour. Original colour printed wrappers preserved in a contemporary dark green/black morocco binding with an elegant floral and architectural design to the upper cover tooled in gilt within double fillet borders, inner gilt dentelles. Closed tears to the margin of one leaf and the rear wrapper, repaired, minor expert restoration to the binding.

First edition, in an exceptionally accomplished binding. This is an account of a summer visit by students at the pre-eminent Paris school of book arts to Lille, Ostend, Bruges, Ghent, Antwerp and Brussels. The entire production (text, type-founding, typography, illustration, mise en page, printing, engraving, photogravure and binding) is by students named on the colophon. The named binders presumably place the book in wrappers, but the additional elegant contemporary gilt tooled binding is unsigned, though likely also an advanced student production. Among the contributors to the text is one ‘Lanoë’ who must be the noted binder Charles Lanoë who was one of the first doreurs (finishers) to study at the École Estienne. He went on to create many fine bindings in the early decades of the twentieth century,