A short history of Bibliophily,
     or    Art and necessity.

     The Poet wrote " the bust outlives the city " , the significant fact being that he wrote these words. Since the third millennium before Christ every civilization has left a mark passage, whether upon stone or clay, later upon wood, papyrus, parchment and finally paper.
     In the fourth century before Christ, Ptolemy 1, Alexander the Great's successor, founded Alexandria's great library to preserve this testimony.
His sons Ptolemy II Philadelph and above all Ptolemy III Evergete turned it, during the following century, the scintillating jewel of Greek culture.

     The greatest minds of the time were appointed to classify this genuine memory of the history of humanity. The most famous among them was Callimachus, who invented a systematic ordering method known as Pinakès (boards) still used nowadays.
     Among these works was the original edition of the three greek tragedians Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Works so precious that Ptolemy III prefered to pay a heavy price to Athenes rather than give them away. Because a great King had distinguished this book and not another, because beyond its content he had recognized an intrinsic value, Bibliophily was born.
     During Antiquity and the Middle-Ages, the book was handwritten and thus reserved to an elite of Nobles, high dignitaries of the church and Monastaries. During this period, the history of bibliophily merged with that of books.
     T he invention in the XV^th century of movable type printing by Gutenberg made the book suddenly reproducible at will. The transmission of knowledge then explodes during the Renaissance. Bibliophily remains nevertheless the handwritten testimony of the great texts till the middle of the XVI^th century. It evolves little by little towards the search for original editions, sometimes illustrated with frontispieces by great painters and realised with the greatest care. For exemple the edition of Racine's theater with bandeaux by Poussin.
     In the late XIX^th century, marked by the industrial revolution, book quality declines because of the new techniques of mechanical composition and the appearence of new papers based on woodpulp. Evidently this drawback does not please the amateur of fine books. First in England, then in France, they created small companies to edit their own works. Bibliophily thus rediscover the various real rag papers, hand make up, and foundry types. Each edition is numbered and the print run is restricted to about 300.
     At the begining of the XXth century, the art dealer Ambroise Vollard asks the painter Bonnard to illustrate with original lithographs " Parallèlement " by Verlaine, thus creating " the painter book " always published as a small run of numbered samples. The greatest like Picasso, Dufy, Chagall, Vlaminck… thus contributed to a dialogue between Poetry and Painting. Modern bibliophily was born.
     The keen desire for fine books, researched, edited and celebrated for their intrinsic artistic and emotional value should never die. At the begining of the third millenium, bibliophily remains, perpetuated by companies like Editions Carrés d'Art, and the Book serenely considers the future, not only as a simple source of knowledge or an embodiment of a certain lifestyle but as the lifestyle itself.