Degas

DEGAS
Aimery Somogy Éditions, Paris · Printed in Germany, 1958 · 36 plates

Paris conceived it. Germany printed it. Vietnam kept it.

Published in 1958 by Aimery Somogy Éditions in Paris — one of France’s most distinguished art publishers — this edition of Degas was designed by Jeannine Thibault and printed by Carl Schünemann in Bremen on paper sourced from the Alamigeon Frères Fils and Lacroix mills. It was a serious object made by serious people who cared deeply about how art reproductions should look and feel.

Reproduction rights were held by S.P.A.D.E.M. — the French society that protected artists’ estates. Every plate in this book was authorised, considered, and crafted.

How it arrived in Vietnam, I cannot say with certainty. What I know is where I found it — in Saigon, decades after it should have been destroyed. It had survived the years between 1975 and the opening of the country with quiet determination, the way beautiful things sometimes do when someone loves them enough to hide them.

Edgar Degas spent his life capturing the ephemeral — dancers mid-movement, women at their toilette, racehorses in morning light. There is an irony in the fact that this record of his fleeting moments has itself become a survivor. These 36 plates are what remain. Each one original. Each one unrepeatable.

One plate. One collector’s stamp. One story. Yours.