Our new Rose Chronicles design is inspired by an elaborately decorated book cover crafted during a key point in the evolution of European bookbinding.
This design was initially released as our Turquoise Chronicles series, and we loved it so much that we have brought it back in this pastel pink colour.
The original design reproduced on our cover hails from the Salel Binder in Paris. The book was published in the early 16th century, when Paris was a flourishing centre of the publishing trade. The city’s reputation was second only to that of Venice, which was spearheading the Renaissance movement and looked to by the rest of Europe for artistic ideas and influences. It was at this time that the gold tooling technique arrived in France from the Islamic realm, where it had first developed. Combined with the French king’s generous patronage of the arts, this ushered in an age of superb French bookbinding.
Rose Chronicles features an especially fine example of early 16th-century French gold tooling. Formed in a graceful, flowing ornament of interlaced arabesques and delicate dots, it shows hints of its Eastern influences and of the decorative styles that would soon emerge in the ateliers of other French binders. To bring out the details of the pattern on our cover design, we contrasted the gold with a rose-fondant background.
Both Turquoise Chronicles and Rose Chronicles are part of our Chroniques collection, so named after the contents of the original binding, a book entitled Chroniques.
We are thankful to the British Library for sharing with us this magnificent work from their Davis Collection.
Rose Chronicles is available as an ultra, midi and mini softcover Flexi notebook.
