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Books as Hermitage Exhibits |
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| by Catherine Kalinovskaya - Curator of Rare Books |
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Rare Books from St. Petersburg is a unique publishing house whose books have already been the subject of three exhibitions at the Hermitage. This publishing house specializes in making hand-made books with a print run of 2 to 25 copies.
Texts are printed on a 19th century hand-operated press or calligraphically drawn on hand-made paper. Books are decorated with illustrations by famous St. Petersburg artists who employ original printing techniques: lithography, etching, woodcutting, monotyping and engraving. Bindings are made from leather, silk, metal, wood, ceramics and marble.
The publisher Piotr Suspitsyn succeeded in creating a unique center for book-printing; there is nothing similar in Europe and perhaps the world. While the tradition of hand-made books has not entirely disappeared in the West, there are currently no centralized publishing houses where the production processes of rare books are combined.
Unique samples of art value books hand-printed by the publishing house have been kept with great care in large book collections of the Hermitage, the Bavarian National Library, the New York Public Library, Engraving Cabinet in Berlin, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the British National Museum and the most famous private book collections.
Catherine Kalinovskaya has worked at the Museum since 1990. As a member of the "Hermitage - IBM" project, Ms. Kalinovskaya was involved in the creation of the State Hermitage Web site and has been the Web site administrator since its inception. |
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