IN A PRECIOUS EXAMPLE

Cants D´amor. Il-lusstrats amb vuit aiguarts originals en colors, compostos i gravats per Edouard Chimot. Josep Janés Editor. Barcelona. 1948.

Folio, (32.5 x 26.3 cm), Frontis, Half title, 204 pp., Includes Cover, seven other engravings, + 1 sheet with index of engravings and 1 sheet with the colophon. Beautiful artistic binding signed by the master Andrés Casares, with his cradle, preserving the original covers. Copy number 103, in perfect condition, ideal for a library of exquisite works.

"Cantos de amor", the work of the poet Ausiàs March (1397 - 1459), one of the most important troubadours of the Valencian Golden Age, brings together the most exalted of his poetry, divided into five parts, dedicated to a woman, his beloved, who does not name, who surrenders to his desire and for this, the author suffers since -he maintains-, before the attraction of the senses, the spirit succumbs.

The subject has been addressed by other poets, especially by Garcilaso de la Vega, another of the great authors of the poetry of the Five Hundred. In the Marquian lyric, a love liberated from the ballast of passion is proposed, although fatally linked to eroticism and sexuality, it suffers from suffering and sinfulness. Here, in a beautiful version with its texts in Catalan, edited by Josep Janés, illustrated by Édouard Chimot.

Let us remember that Andrés Casares -son of the antiquarian bookseller Alberto Casares- transits his maturity in the trade after an intense Parisian training first in the workshop of Jean Paul Laurenchet and then in that of Madame Marian Peter, to continue such important work in his Argentine workshop. . First prize of La Neuvième Biennale Mondiale de la Reliure d'Art-Prix du Ministère de la Culture in 2007, ten years later the Museum of Books and Language, dependent on the National Library of the Argentine Republic [1], presented in an exhibition entitled "Artistic Bindings by Andrés Casares for an Argentine Library", a hundred fine bindings of his authorship, made for a collector based in this city.

Note:

1. He currently teaches a bookbinding course at the Mariano Moreno National Library.