Over the past year, the Fisher Library has begun to acquire works from one of the country's most talented artists, Robert Wu. The Toronto-based Wu works in a variety of media, including handmade bookbinding, boxmaking, paper marbling and letterpress. He creates fine leather bound books and marbled papers using traditional tools and techniques and the finest materials available.

His marbling works are particularly stunning, and the Fisher recently added an album of his marbled graphics (click for catalogue record) to its collection. Marbling is an ancient art of painting on watersurface where colours are floated and then manipulated into different designs with combs and stylus. Then a sheet of paper is laid onto the size to pick up the colours and create the image. The images are contained within a double elephant folio bound by the artist in slate grey French goatskin on the upper cover with black cowhide for the spine and lower cover. With a large panel of the "marbled potpourri" graphics edged in red French chagrin leather inset on upper cover, and with the title and artist's name hand-tooled in black along bottom edge of inset. There are also over 20 separate loose unbound sheets, a few of which can be seen below.

Another new acquisition from Robert Wu's studio is a beautifully bound copy of a book from 1930: Le Demi-Dieu: Le Voyage en Grece, by Jacques de Lacretelle and illustrated by G. Gaillibert. The quartro-sized book was bound by Wu in 2011 with fine blue French Morocco leather from Paris - handsewn silk headbands with top edge coloured in blue and gauffered with foil dots. On the cover, an image of the Greek island and Mediterranian Sea is depicted. Images from the binding (back and front) are shown below.

The Art of Robert Wu