ИСКУССТВО РУКОТВОРНОЙ КНИГИ. Альбом к выставке (издание на английском языке)

A catalogue of the first exhibition of the Rare Books from St Petersburg publishing house held in the State Hermitage Museum. The large-scale exhibition ran successfully from 20 October to 13 December 1998, presenting 17 books produced by the publishing house in the seven years since its foundation in 1991, each of which is a bibliographic rarity.

In the creation of the volumes both traditional materials — hand-made paper, leather, copper and brass — and highly unusual ones — ceramics and marble — were used. Illustrations accompany the texts that are calligraphically penned or set by hand and printed on a 19th-century hand press. Among the books on show in the exhibition was the publication with which the history of the publishing house began — drawings from life made on lithographic stones and printed under the supervision of their creator, the Soviet and Russian graphic artist Andrei Pakhomov, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts, Honoured Artist of the Russian Federation. The product of many years’ labour by the outstanding artist Academician Ilya Bogdesko and the culmination of his oeuvre was the illustrations for Cervantes’s "Don Quixote", which have become classic works. The tragedy "Antigone" was printed in Greek. The typeface Antigone was specially designed for this edition by the artist Sergei Shvemberger.