We are pleased to announce the new releases featured in our Spring Catalogue for 2010:

Safavid Binding Art
Our brand new Safavid Binding Art collection exquisitely renders decorative book binding from the Islamic Golden Age, when Persian Safavid-style designs represented a high point for the art of the book. In this collection we introduce a new product for Paperblanks: the Safavid Storage Box. Here we’ve taken the high standards and quality we put to our journals and applied it to box design. Our Safavid Storage box portrays a remarkable leather filigree pattern incorporating handtooled motifs that retain an elegance and style even in our modern context.

Grolier Ornamentali
Our Grolier Ornamentali series is based on one of the last great commissions of Jean Grolier (1479-1565), one of history’s most discerning collectors of beautiful books and the first to develop a unique ornamental style of designs that become one of the most emulated worldwide. The majority of these brilliant works were executed in Paris by two remarkable binding houses.

Leonardo’s Sketches
In a body of work that is perhaps unparalleled in history, Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452-1519) sketches and copious notes allow us to peer into the mind of a genius. A man of unquenchable curiosity spanning an infinite spectrum, he was simultaneously taken with the concepts of grace and geometric structure of the universe. Our new Leonardo’s Sketches series depicts his diagram of the light of the moon relative to the brilliance of the sun, as recorded in the Codex Leicester. In this collection of scientific writings, we are reminded of the light Da Vinci shone on humanity’s potential for greatness.

Chopin Polonaise
Coinciding with the 200th anniversary of his birth, we have released a new Embellished Manuscript dedicated to one of the greatest musicians of the Romantic period, Frédéric Chopin. Chopin combined his emotionality and expressiveness with technique as demanding as it was dazzling. While the polonaise originated in Poland at the beginning of the nineteenth century, those written by Chopin are masterpieces that have come to define the genre. Our cover features an autograph manuscript of Chopin’s Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 53, composed in 1842.

Laurel Burch
New formats and titles are available this fall in our very popular Laurel Burch Collection. A self-taught artist and “flower-child” who sold handmade jewellery on the streets of San Francisco in the 1960s, Burch developed an unmistakable painting style that was the manifestation of her love of life and strong imaginative nature. Our new titles include a series of Micros called Playful Creations , and a series of Slim formats titled Blossoms.

Japanese Lacquer
We’ve also added new Ultra formats to our Japanese Lacquer series. The book covers in this collection portray masterful examples of 19th-century Japanese lacquer boxes. Selected from a private collection in Kyoto, these boxes are lacquered in the Maki-e tradition, in which sap from the lacquer tree is sprinkled with metallic powder to create luxurious designs. These fine lacquered surfaces are evidence of the uniquely human ability to create beauty from unlikely sources.