This binding was made by Jean Marius-Michel in 1912. Marius- Michel, one of the great finishers, possibly the greatest, of the 19th century, set up shop in 1849 in Rue Salle-au- Comte; then moved to Rue Dauphine and later to Rue Jacob. He was well known as a finisher and a number of leading binders, at work between 1849 and 1876, had their bindings tooled by Marius-Michel, who worked twelve to fourteen hours per day, mainly making pastiches of earlier decorated bindings. His son, Henri-François- Victor Michel (who later worked as Marius-Michel) was born in Paris on 28 December 1846. He is considered the most remarkable binder of the late 19th-early 20th century. In 1862, aged sixteen, he became apprenticed to his father. In 1876 he became a partner in his father’s workshop at 15 Rue du Four, and adopted his father’s name. Around that date things changed. The Paris binders got tired of imitations and started to use their own finishers (instead of Marius-Michel Père, d. 1890). Michel junior approached the craft with a remarkable initiative and a real artistic temperament. He could draw, he wrote and did research. He was no longer interested in pastiche, but developed a new style (we would now call it Art Nouveau). He used the best leather skins and left them as they were, rather than flattening the grain by polishing it as had been the habit. For the exposition of 1878 he made ornamental bindings with large and bold floral and mosaic decoration extending over the whole of the covers, executed with gouges and onlays, for which he won a medal. His bindings were classified as “art” rather than craft. His interlaced designs of branches and flowers were not symmetrical, but often the halves and quarters of the decorated covers show the same motives, but inverted. They were impeccably made and well finished. Initially they did not find universal favour, but gradually they became admired and by 1885 he had achieved his ambition to design new bindings for new specially printed and illustrated bibliophilic publications for private collectors. He also used incised and moulded leather, achieving a relief effect. His doublures often show large mosaic and floral motifs, as well as arabesques. He also produced simpler and more commercial bindings. In 1880 he published a book on the history of French binding, followed a year later by one on commercial binding.¹ At the Exposition of 1900 he was awarded the Grand Prix and created a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour. After that date his designs became more allegorical and emblematic, but did not reflect the text. George Cretté was a favourite pupil. There was less activity during the 1914-18 war and, when after the war he became ill and could no longer do the physical work himself, George Cretté first worked with him and then took over the atelier. Marius-Michel died, aged seventy-nine, in 1925. He had great influence on modern binding design. A retrospective exhibition at the Petit Palais in Paris in 1927 showed 129 bindings by him.² Baron Joseph Raphaël Vitta, first owner of the volume, came from a family of bankers in Piedmont. He was born in Lyons in 1860 and died in Breuil in 1942. He was himself a banker, a bibliophile, and a collector of art, especially of French 18th- and 19th-century paintings. In 1897 he had his villa in Évian decorated by the best artists of his time. He was a considerable benefactor, giving several important paintings to museums in Nice, Paris and Lyons. He was a Cavaliere dell’Ordine della Corona d’Italia. His wife, Malvina-Marie Bléquette (b. 1881) survived him by six years. 

Mirjam Foot 

¹ La Reliure française depuis l’invention 1880; La reliure française commerciale et industrielle [1881]. 

² Devauchelle 1959-61, vol. III, pp. 45-48, 75-92, 144-148; B. D. Maggs, in New York 1999, no. 93 (illustrating another binding that belonged to Baron Vitta).