The Paré Binding

Custom designed and bound for a copy of the 1579 - Les Oeuvres d’Ambroise Paré, Conseiller, et Premier Chirurgien du Roy.

El sueno de la razon produce monstruos. - Francisco Goya - 1799.

The sleep of reason produces monsters…

While this robust early medical printing is literally bursting with fantastic engravings, it was important to carefully select images which would create a binding that might speakfor this 443 year old work in a truly meaningful way.

The supernatural dragon, (inspired by page LXIIII), coiling itself from cover to cover, represents the ancient mythologies of our earlier attempts to explain our world. Long before the word “science” was used, our ancestors required an answer for the unexplainable in the darkness, creating primitive stories to ease our fears.

The tail of the great scaled beast is skewered by an early medical instrument held by a prosthetic hand, (inspired by page VIIIcXXXIX). The combination of the surgical device and the punctured dragon is a nod to the Rod of Asclepius, (caduceus).

As the dragon crosses over the spine, it also passes beneath a spine belonging to the boney remains of a birth abnormality... a two headed fetal skeleton, (inspired by page IXcXXVIII). This somewhat macabre imagery touches on the indifference of nature, and the often cold, cruel realities of our world.

The back cover of the binding reveals the body of the dragon being severed. The once terrifying and powerful monster is defeated by a humble crab, (inspired by page LXV), reinforcing that the dark realms of our fabricated fears are ever-illuminated by scientific discovery.

In The Walker Library of the History of Human Imagination.

Bound by Felton Bookbinding Ltd. Photography by Gary William Ogle.