Sliman BEN IBRAHIM [trans. and ill. Etienne DINET], Rabia El - Lot 234

Sliman BEN IBRAHIM [trans. and ill. Etienne DINET], Rabia El Kouloub ou Le Printemps des coeurs. Légendes sahariennes, Paris, L'édition d'art - H. Piazza et Cie Éditeurs, 1902. Printed on Blanchet et Kléber vellum paper, justified 128 / 300. Illustrated with 58 partially gilded color compositions, including a frontispiece and 10 full-page illustrations. One volume in-8. Bound in full orange morocco with boards decorated with a Moorish-style frame with gilt roulette and fillets, black listel with wavy pattern of gilt fillets, various mosaic fleurons in emerald, olive and sand morocco at the corners and spandrels. Spine ribbed. Inner frame in the same morocco, decorated with fillets and the same wavy roulette of gilded fillets. Brocade linings and endpapers. Double marbled paper endpapers, double gilt filleting on edges and headpieces, illustrated covers and spine preserved. Matching slipcase. Binding signed Pétrus RUBAN (1851-1929) and dated 1903. Dimensions: 23.5x17.5 cm. (58 color compositions and not 60, those on the covers being repeated in the text, trace of an old bookplate on the first counterplate, wear and small tears to the slipcase). Born in Villefranche-sur-Saône, Ainé Ruban, known as Pétrus Ruban, practiced in Paris from 1879 to 1910. Considered one of the greatest bookbinders of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, he established his first workshop at 16, rue Dauphine, before transferring it to 9, rue de Savoie in 1896. At the 1889 Universal Exhibition, his lined and mosaic bindings were awarded a silver medal for their originality. The Exhibition report noted that "M. Ruban exhibited very successful bindings. By continuing to study the fine models left to us by the masters of past centuries and the bindings of our modern artists, both in terms of the perfect constitution of the book block and cover and the correct, well-nourished gilding decoration, this exhibitor will not be long in taking the place among the latter that he rightly seeks".