Digitized Book of the Week: Catalog of the Maurice Escoffier Collection for the Giraud-Badin Auction
Maurice Escoffier was Professor of Diplomatic History at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques in the first half of the 20th century. He also was the school librarian and editor-in-chief of the Annales des Sciences Politiques and the Journal Revue des sciences politiques. Professor Escoffier had a particular fondness for the Romanticism and, along with these activities, his passion for books led him to open a bookstore of old books The House of the bibliophile (“La Maison du bibliophile”) in 1922. He had to close the shop at the beginning of the 1930s due to financial difficulties brought by the crisis of 1929.
The catalog of his collection was prepared by Librairie Giraud-Badin in 1933.
95 pages with 44 facsimile illustrations in color and black ink.
The full catalog is already available to our patrons at Patreon with pledges of $5 or more per month.
Besides the obvious, that I love these catalogs (they allow seeing works of bookbinders from different countries and times,) I found an interesting stamp on some of the pages. I’m not sure what the Sphinx should represent. I guess the initials M.E. correspond to the owner of the collection – Maurice Escoffier. Is that his ex-libris? Le livre delivre definitely sounds like something you can find on an ex-libris.
My first thought was that the Sphinx had some relation to the paper because it is found only on pages with color illustrations. And they differ from other pages made by the Vélin du Marais. But then I found out who was the initial owner of the collection and the initials made sense.
Has anyone seen the ex-libris of Maurice Escoffier?
And how do you like this capital letter L? =)
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