Rare Books and Artworks

I promised to share a love story with you from the Salon du Livre. Here is the story of how I fell in love with a cat, lost a substantial amount of money but gained much happiness.

In addition to the bold, colourful artworks decorating the various stands at the Geneva Book Fair, there was one stand which drew my attention. Fortunately (or should that be unfortunately?) it was right next door to us, so I could browse to my heart’s content.

ACB (Art, Creations et Bibliophilie) is a small company based near Morges, specialising in rare books, beautiful ililustrations and limited edition original artworks.

This is a booklover and book collector’s dream. Hand-coloured prints on delicate handmade paper – these are the illuminated manuscripts of the present day.

For the 70th anniversary of The Little Prince, they commissioned a contemporary artist to reinvent the colour prints to accompany the text. I cannot explain how exquisitely made the paper is, what a pleasurable tactile experience it is to leaf through the book.

But, of course, the original artwork is there too – on loose leafs, so you could frame each one of them.

I was also attracted by a leather-bound, gold-edged, hand-coloured edition of Ulysees, but at the price of around 4500 CHF (£3200 or $4700), it was well beyond my budget. However, if I were a millionare, I know in which shop I would go mad when it came to decorating my house!

ACB also had original artwork to decorate their stand and there was one painting by a Chinese artist which caught my eye. Apologies for the rather dim photo.

Only problem was: it was way out of my price range. After three days of hmming and hawing, much soul-searching, worrying and then telling myself that my parents had once upon a time given me some money to buy something memorable for myself on a round birthday (and I never had)… and after the lovely Pierre Perottin and other people at the ACB stand promised to deliver, offered me a better price and allowed me to pay in instalments… reader, I married this painting and am in utter honeymoon bliss!

If you want to see more of the artwork on offer, ACB have a Facebook page or you can contact Pierre Perottin directly on acbperottin[at]gmail[dot]com. They are not paying me to advertise or promote their business, but it’s the kind of thing that us inveterate booklovers might enjoy (to at least dream of!).