Interview with M. Pierre Ouvrard, Thursday, June 22, 2000.

Pierre Ouvrard visited Edmonton in June, 2000 to attend a reception held in his honour. The occasion was an exhibition of his works, many of which are held in the Bruce Peel Special Collections Library at the University of Alberta. What follows is an edited excerpt of an interview held with M. Ouvrard on that occasion. The interview was held in English; M. Ouvrard was kind enough to respond in English.

Readers are cautioned that this transcript is based on a flawed tape-recording and errors or inconsistencies in the summary may be the result of technical problems experienced in the transcription of the interview. Certain words were unclear in the taped interview. In these cases the transcriber supplied a word or words; brackets have been used to identify these words. As well, it has been necessary to omit large portions of the interview; thus the result is not a purely verbatim record of M. Ouvrard's comments.

All references are to the book Pierre Ouvrard Master Bookbinder/Maître relieur, published by the University of Alberta Press, 2000.

I : What do you enjoy the most about your trade?

O : I could give you an easy answer: whatever the next project I have. Personally, library type binding never interested me. I did a few hundred thousand books in library binding, but that's not what I had in mind. I made library bindings up to the 70's and for the Court of Appeals up to 1972 - 73. From then on I did the livres d'artiste because I was all ready for that of the industry - the first one I did was in 1958. I've been doing unique bindings all along. I have, I think about 200 or 300 unique bindings and have made 500 livres d'artiste.

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