Antique French Cartonnage Book

Antique French Prize Book in Gilt Cartonnage, Dated 1856

France | 1856

A French prize book in publisher's cartonnage: dark blue-green percaline over boards, blocked all over in gold with a foliate wreath, a scrolled cartouche and a deep leafy border, the spine lettered CONQUÊTE DE GRENADE. Published by A. Mame et Cie at Tours for their Bibliothèque de la Jeunesse.

The reason to want it is bound in at the front. The prize leaf reads: Pensionnat de Mme Dupont, Grande-Rue no. 105, à Ingouville. Distribution des Prix. 3e Classe. Prix de Tapisserie, obtenu par Mlle Léontine Barras. Ce 13 Août 1856.

Ingouville is now part of Le Havre. On the thirteenth of August 1856, at a girls' boarding school on the Grande-Rue, Léontine Barras won the needlework prize, and this is the book she was handed in front of the room. Her name is set down in a clerk's copperplate in brown ink, and it remains the most legible thing on the page.

Cartonnage of this kind was made to be given away, which is why the bindings are so consistently grander than the books inside them. A French publisher in the 1850s knew exactly what a prize book was for: it had to look like an achievement across a crowded hall. This one still does. The gold sits high on the cloth and catches from any angle, and the blue-green has gone deep and slightly uneven with time in the way percaline does.

7.25 x 4.5 inches.

Details

• Title: Conquête de Grenade
• Publisher: A. Mame et Cie, Tours, Bibliothèque de la Jeunesse
• Binding: Publisher's gilt-blocked cartonnage in blue-green percaline
• Presentation: Prize leaf, Pensionnat de Mme Dupont, Ingouville, Prix de Tapisserie awarded to Mlle Léontine Barras, 13 August 1856
• Origin: France
• Date: 1856
• Size: 7.25 x 4.5 inches
• Condition: Good antique condition, with rubbing to the extremities and age toning to the paper