The skills of creation – how our editions are created.

The Belles Heures, one of the most sophisticated books of hours ever created. This ornate codex is the most personal of Duke de Berry’s prayer books. Magnificent miniatures, decorative filigree borders and coltish decorative elements are all proof of his love of the artistic work of the Limburg brothers. The manuscript is kept in the Metropolitain Museum of Art, The Cloisters, New York, Acc. No. 54.1.1; It has been created in France after 1404.

Manuscripts are unique creations. There is only one of each of them – worldwide. And they are more than just assembled text, beautiful calligraphy and stunning artwork. They have been created by true masters of their time, artists in the best sense of the word.

They had a clear vision in bringing letters, brushstrokes or precious metallic foils to paper, forming unique breathtaking pages, using their skills to create ideas, to manifest creativity and to form purpose. Their art gives us impressions of the respective epoch and culture, but it also brings back their ideas, philosophy, and attitudes to life.

The process of making a perfect Facsimile Edition is long and complicated. After digitizing the original in a very careful way with our special equipment, weeks of post-production of the files follow. Each page has to be reviewed, corrected and prepared for the printing process. Some original colours are corrected by hand since they cannot be reproduced automatically.

Our major aim is to follow the steps of those artists with techniques of our time. Therefore we do not only make a technically perfect replica of a manuscript. We want more. We want to include those intentions, those visions, those ideas in the replica – we are looking for the soul of these unique pieces of art, and we want to transfer it into our facsimiles.

For us, reproduction is art; it cannot be apprehended by pure facts only. It is also a matter of emotion, understanding and cultural exchange – to understand the roots, to consider cultural identity and to give the Facsimile Edition its own personality. Only in considering these factors altogether, a Fine Art Facsimile Edition can become a unique piece of art of our time, the most precious book treasure of the Twenty-First century.

A special task is the preparation of metallic colours: each gold or silver area has to be edited by hand. In this image two different sorts of gold can be seen. Depending on the characteristics of the original, appropriate techniques and materials are used for the printing – from gold and silver foils or metallic dust to 23K genuine gold. In a final stage, it is necessary to recreate texture or patina on the gold as well.

To achieve optimal results, we are using only the best „ingredients“. Our specialists are the best experts in their respective fields, fed by the knowledge we built up since 1965, creating a worldwide unique pool of experience for more than 55 years. Digitizers, retouchers, lithographs are included in the pre-press phase, the most sophisticated and time-consuming process which is necessary to make the replica undistinguishable from the original. They are using the most modern technical equipment, but also have deep knowledge and understanding of manuscripts as well as colors and their physical characteristics.

To ensure the best result, a first proof is produced and compared to the original. If even minor variances in colour are discovered, these are corrected in the files. This procedure is repeated until the result meets our quality demands.

There are also parts of our work which need the traditional skills of our ancestors. Only centuries-old craftsmanship, passed-on through generations allow us to re-create the bindings and boxes the artists have been creating over the centuries.

To create our editions, we are only using materials of the highest quality – sophisticated and high-grade – to fit the original’s characteristics in the best way possible, but also to honor the intentions of the artists: to create unique masterpieces with their impressive art, but also with the most precious materials they had access to.

Normally we choose to reproduce the binding of the original, if it is relevant; otherwise we take a similar binding of the time and culture, appropriate to the characteristics of the original. All our editions are hand-sewn.

Each of our editions is accompanied by a commentary volume giving the owner of the Facsimile Edition a scholarly overview of the original: its origins and why it was created, its history and a description of its contents – for example, descriptions of individual miniatures.

All these parts of our work together allow us to reach the challenging goal we established for every single edition published in our companies: to recreate a single unique masterpiece, of course perfect in a technical way, but even more to catch ideas, visions and atmosphere of the time of the original’s creation, to experience the culture, even to be able to feel the stories behind the artwork.

We are constantly working on perfection – in every aspect.

The Salzburg Pericopes are a breathtaking example of the finesse of the Ottonian book illumination. The manuscript, today kept in the Bavarian State Library, Clm 15713, is more than 1000 years old. The binding consists of a real leather cover with altogether 12 ivory plates, which we reproduced according to the original, but of course not in ivory, but with a special synthetic resin mixture.