Gestes et opinions du Docteur Faustroll, pataphysicien (Exploits and Opinions of Doctor Faustroll, Pataphysician)

Mary Reynolds produced book bindings for at least six of Alfred Jarry’s novels and plays; Jarry’s energetic output at the end of the 19th century helped set the trajectory for the avant-garde thinkers and artists with whom Reynolds worked in the 20th.

In Gestes et opinions du Docteur Faustroll, Jarry’s protagonist travels through an imaginary Paris in a polished copper boat absurdly drilled with thousands of holes like a sieve. Reynolds represented this fanciful vessel with a pair of thin copper plates, punched with a meticulous constellation of holes, and set over translucent sheets of glassine, the faint green color of which evoke the surface of the ocean or perhaps Doctor Faustroll’s long, sea-green mustache. Framed with meaty black leather, the gentle perforations lend a sense of buoyancy to the otherwise heavy materiality of this small book.