Bruce Levy
2000 WINNER: DeGolyer Award for American Bookbinding

Levy was born in New York City in 1950. He worked for four years with Max Adjarian, former Restorer at the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris. Levy owned and operated the Da Vinci Bindery for eight years, offering rare book conservation and fine bindings in California, and was a Senior Book Conservator at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin from 1985 to 1988. He is now a rare book conservator and fine binder in Nevada City, California.

On his binding:

Having restored five or six Ulysses during the last several years, I find myself to have been subtly programmed to love the sometimes patinated blue of the original wrappers and the simplicity of the titling. I chose to approximate the color and minimalist design of the wrapper -- perhaps metamorphosed slightly -- in a pale blue leather, with Molly's last words echoed in gilt on the back cover, while the rest of the outer decoration remains blind. The binding is the K-118 structure.

The front doublure, represents Bloom's inner mind, full of thoughts of not only his wife's passionate relationship with another man, but also the sexual longings of Bloom, as shown in his love letter, his voyeurism on the beach, and his visit, with Stephen Dedalus, to a brothel.

The back doublure is the final soliloquy from Molly as she languishes in her sexual memories of this day and her past life, and as she acknowledges a deep love for Bloom as well.

Both doublures are rendered from photographs by the binder, carved, cut (cuir-cisele), molded, and airbrushed calf in muted brown tones. Relief panels are bordered in multicolored frames of onlaid, inlaid, and tooled leather. Headbands are sewn to text in three colors.

I am grateful to have read this work and at some level to have become part of its history as it has become part of mine.