This monograph composes the biography of the Deflinne family, whose descendants were booksellers in the town of Tournay for more than a century. Their famous bookbinding workshop achieved the pinnacle of its fame in 1824 when Barthélémy-Leopold Deflinne (1791-1846) becomes the purveyor of King Willem I of the Netherlands. In this study Claude Sorgeloos presents his research on the activities of several generations of bookbinders from the same family and traces the tools they used over two centuries, as attested to by the bindings produced by the workshops led by the Casterman family and Charles Desamblanx, who bought the tools when the Deflinne family ceased their activities. Several aspects of bookselling and bookbinding in a provincial town like Tournay during the Austrian, French and Dutch periods are documented, including the booktrade between Tournay, Paris and La Haye, the trade of bindings between Antwerp and Lille, etc. This volume also contains the genealogy of the family, their unedited correspondance, the catalogue and reproductions of 147 bindings, pricelists and other archival documents.

Volume editor: Colin Clair