Pierre Ouvrard Collection and Archive On-line

	The man himself
	The bindings
	Governor General Awards
	Virtual Exhibit
	Interview
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Interview Transcript (page 3)

I : Is this a bookbinding?

O: Madam, I think that's [he points to {David Homel. Why Must a Black Writer Write About Sex? P. 84). in the Ouvrard Catalogue] a very nice binding okay. On the other hand, you have the dog business a few pages away. I think it's amusing. (Leaon Roche. Shakespeare's Dog. P. 64). And maybe it seems like nothing but I'm proud to be able to think of something like that.

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I : Is there anything that you wish you had done differently?

O : No. Once it's done, it's done.

(David Adams Richard, Lines on the Water - A Frenchman's Life on the Miramichi. P. 90). This one here tells the story of a fisherman on the Miramichi River. I didn't know what to do so then I found salmon skin and added the fishing line - and that's pretty much a man fishing.

I : How long does it take for you to go from start to finish when you are working on something?

O : One of the big problems is that you can't say. I'll start a book; I may work for 15 minutes and then press on the weight because between each operation the glue has to dry permanently. What they do in industrial binding is use ether and it is dried by a heat lamp or something like that and they have a big edition sometimes when they put the book in the box packing the book is wet and then packed very very tight against the other books they ship. It can dry on the way because it's done by machine, but you can't do hand binding continuously because things need time to dry before the next step. So as I said, you may work 15 minutes today, a half-hour tomorrow and 15 minutes the day after. It takes a couple of hours to mold the leather, to prepare leather, and to pare it for edge folding.

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