To speak of Barcelona it is necessary to begin in Paris.
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There, in the French National library, in 1987, a very peculiar exhibition was celebrated. About books, of course. Bindings realized between 1610 and 1630 with proofs of the year in which they were gave in to his respective owners, to the king, Luis XIII, or to the noblemen, Gastón de Orleáns, Enrique de Borbón-Condé… dedicated copies and diplomatic presents. But there was something strange there. The books were opened neither by his front, nor by his best engravings, even the bindings were not appearing … they were opened by the endleaves¡¡ And on the walls of the exhibition room they were hanging some contemporary marbled sheets. A true nonsense. No, by no means. Endleaves were the topic of the exhibition. The marbled papers that come from Istanbul, and had been used by the French bookbinders in these books for the first time. And along with them, some of the first endleaves that were made in France with this technique. That's why what were appearing of those books were the papers.
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You will say: extravagance. No, the exhibition traveled to the Royal Library of The Hague on the following year and served to encourage new studies and exhibitions on this topic. It was a pioneering exhibition.
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And now Barcelona comes.
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Joan Amades, the well-known Catalan folklorist, had between his many interests that one of collecting the endleaves of the books that he ordered to re-bind. Such an emulation led him to writing a small leaflet of 22 pages on them, which is up to today, the only written work in our country dedicated exclusively to this topic. Finally, his collection happened to belong to the Decorative Arts Museum of the above mentioned city, and some time ago I had the privilege of being able to examine it thoroughly, with the permission of Teresa Bastardes.
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Today the gear Museum assembly of Barcelona is restructuring in full and a living Museum of Design has been created, the Disseny Hub of Barcelona, which includes an Office of Graphic Arts, between many other activities and departments. And a part of this office is the collection of endleaves of Joan Amades with other contributions, which enlarge it, and provided this Museum with a real collection of endleaves, the only one in Spain.
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But this is not all. The fact is that they value exactly what they have. And they look at it with the same eyes of the people in charge of the exhibition in Paris. Yesterday Teresa sent to me the link I’m sending to you. A two minutes video on bindings … opened by its endleaves.
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Thank you, Teresa.
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