Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy has a new rare exhibit

Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy received a gift - a handwritten book "Hafiz Shirazi. Forty poems", constituting a compilation of poems of one of the greatest lyric poets of the world literature, a Persian poet Hafiz Shirazi. This present was made to the museum by the founder and head of the publishing house "Rare Book from Saint-Petersburg", Piotr Suspitsyn.

The solemn presentation of a book took place on the 19th of August 2019.

A compilation of poems "Hafiz Shirazi. Forty poems" became a third book, gifted to the museum by Piotr Suspitsyn. Other two - "Ten Commandments. Deuteronomy 5:6-21" and "Thirty six stratagems. Ancient Chinese treatise" - were gifted by the publisher to mark the opening and 10th anniversary of the museum.

Books, published under Piotr Suspitsyn's guidance - are artworks, sort of literary monuments.

All of them are either written calligraphically or typed on a vintage printing equipment.

At Piotr Suspitsyn's workshop lost traditions of book printing of Gutenberg's era are restored and preserved, the books are published, which become a heritage of Hermitage, the New York Public Library, British National Museum, private collections of connoisseurs of high book culture.

The team of "Rare Book" had worked on edition of the book "Hafiz Shirazi. Forty poems", constituting 25 copies, since December 2016. The first copy was finished in April 2019.

The edition includes the originals of St.Petersburg's painter Rashid Dominov, member of the Union of Artists of Russia, member of St.Petersburg Academy of Modern Art, laureate of Boris Kustodiev Republic Award.

The interpretations of poems are typed on the typeface Bembo and on the manual machine of XIX century "Dinglersche maschinen".

The handwritten text belongs to famous Iranian calligrapher Bahman Panahi. 

The book's binding is made from silk with unique pattern, created by the textile artist Elena Schneider in ancient technique of hand screen printing "pochoir". This technique originated in the East, where in many millennia BC the production of silk started for the first time. In XVI–XVIII centuries the screen printing firmly located in Western Europe, particularly in France, where it was used for decoration of furniture, walls, textiles and metal goods. "Pochoir" was used for realization of creative ideas by Lev Bakst, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and other remarkable artists.

Contemporary Museum of Calligraphy has a new rare exhibit