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a black and white image of an old book with a decorative borderan old black and white drawing of a man and woman in a manger
ALDE

211 - WOVEN PRAYER BOOK based on the illuminations in manuscripts …
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Estimate €3,000 - €4,000
Sale commission
Description
WOVEN PRAYER BOOK based on the illuminations in manuscripts from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Lyon, [A. Roux], 1886. Square 8vo (170 x 135 mm), aubergine Jansenist morocco, gilded fillets on the edges, interior framing of mosaic morocco leather strips set with a roulette pattern and gilded fillets, plum-coloured silk linings and endpapers, double silver-coloured silk endpapers, gilded head and tail, box signed A. Roux (Kauffmann-Petit). A very rare and curious example of a book with lettering woven in black on silver-coloured silk. Entirely produced on a Jacquard loom in Lyon, the book comprises 50 pages of text decorated with various floral borders, numerous ornate letters and reproductions of four miniatures. Produced in a small print run—reportedly around fifty copies—this edition was produced by the firm of J.-A. Henry, a manufacturer, based on designs by the Reverend Father J. Hervier. According to Paul Marais’s article, ‘the book is woven on silk using a Jacquard loom; the fabric, made of very fine silk and remarkably tightly woven, has 400 weft ends per inch […]. The number of cards required for such a work is enormous, amounting to no fewer than several hundred thousand, and the total surface area of all these cards is estimated at 70 square metres. To achieve such finesse in the reproduction of the frames and ornate letters [...], a very high degree of precision in movement is required. [...] It took more than two years to produce this prayer book, and there is one engraving that had to be redone some fifty times before a satisfactory result was achieved’. Examples of woven books are extremely rare. This one was preceded by an edition of Lamartine’s poem *Les Laboureurs* in 1883, produced by the same manufacturer, who held a licence for woven type. Vicaire, V, 342 – Paul Marais, ‘Note on a prayer book made of silk fabric’, *Bulletin du bibliophile*, 1889, pp. 163–166.
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About the sale Fine antique books – A library in the Languedoc
Auction location
Auction time 10/20/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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