One of the most celebrated of French binding designers, bookbinding began as a hobby for Paul Bonet. He was a modeler of wooden fashion mannequins when he was asked by a friend to design covers for his modest book collection. Within five years Bonet's bindings had been exhibited in several Paris galleries as well as at the Salon d'Automne, at which point he decided to take up the art professionally. While openly acknowledging his debt to the work of Pierre Legrain, seen in his more linear bindings of the 1920s, by 1930, through his wildly innovative and daring technique, Bonet had firmly established himself as a force in his own right. Bonet designed three-dimensional sculpted bindings, all metal and pierced bindings; he incorporated such materials as ivory, lacquer, eggshell, nickel, steel, palladium, gold, platinum and duralumin in his work, and his own preoccupation with the letters of the book's title as a central force of his designs was profoundly influential on the field. His techniques of the 1930s naturally lent themselves to surrealism, and he designed numerous Surrealist bindings including those for Pablo Picasso's Le Chef-d'Oeuvre Inconnu and Buffon.


Paul Bonet, Carnets 1924-1971 (Paris 1981) no. 55; Carteret Romantique 157.