Contre jours. by BOURNAZEL, Diane de.

4to (220 × 150 mm), 16 unnumbered pages, plus endpapers, handmade paper, all in pen and ink, fully illuminated in gouache colours, with paper-cutting and and collage, within cut and illuminated borders, 3 leaves with circular translucent japanese paper inlays. Bound by Armelle Guégant in decorative boards and matching with paper onlays, the upper cover with circular reverse-painted glass inlay, slipcase.

The title, Contre jours, is enigmatic, firstly suggesting ‘backlighting’ (a literal translation of contre jour) in optical terms but also, more playfully, a sense of days against days, or of other oppositions such as dark and light. This particular book teems with human life, perhaps more than any other recent De Bournazel creation — from the figures and faces crowding the margins, sometimes only half seen, the silhouettes of figures against the sun, to the masses of tiny figures in squares and rectangles and crowded into miniature tower blocks. The cover bears an inlaid miniature, with two faces or masks drawn on the reverse of a convex glass disc.