'Bibliofilia pop (vol. II)' by Juan Miguel Muñoz
Although the motto of the De La Pulcra Ceniza imprint is “publishing differently,” we have always professed a profound admiration for traditional graphic arts and old-fashioned printing. So much so that, at the time, we decided to create a line of bibliophile publications with those noble copies that no one values anymore and are lying around without glory. Thus, the La Estampa Indeleble collection was born.
It’s common to see high-quality editions and beautiful publications from the days of fine publishing abandoned in flea markets, if not thrown into the garbage. With few exceptions, this material, with erased authors and outdated themes, deteriorates and eventually disappears. Not all of it can be saved, but unusual or especially distinguished editions deserve a second chance. That is the mission of La Estampa Indeleble.
For that book that no one wants to revive interest and continue to be in circulation, it is essential to give it a new identity that makes it attractive. The operation we perform for this purpose is clean, minimally invasive, and always respectful of the integrity of the text: we open the book, remove the courtesy page or some other exempt page, print its new identity there, replace it as the cover, and proceed to close the volume again. We then clean it, present it in a methacrylate box on a red velvet background, and omit nothing, clearly indicating that beneath the shocking and extremely rare facade of an unlikely edition of Kurt Cobain’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, for example, lies an obscure, forgotten, humble, and beautiful Vidas de niños santos by José Castells, published in 1906 by La Hormiga de Oro.
Since 2011, we have placed these works under the support of La Estampa Indeleble, a single-copy editorial collection we have been working with ever since. To avoid common artistic terminology, we use the term “rigged books” and define our work as Pop Bibliophilia.
