Les yeux fertiles (Fertile Eyes)

In 1936, the Surrealist Paul Eluard wrote a collection of love poems inspired by his new wife, Nusch Eluard. Les Yeux Fertiles (Fertile Eyes), contains four offset illustrations by Eluard’s dear friend Pablo Picasso and an inscription that indicates the book was a gift to Surrealist poet Georges Hugnet. To emphasize this collaboration, Mary Reynolds bound the book in mottled undyed ostrich leather with a thin black strip on the spine that lists the title and author. Impressed between each gilded word on the spine are three dots, plus one on each end. Aesthetically and tactilely, there is a theme of bumpiness all over most of the book, with fleshy pores marking the distinct recesses of the animal’s skin where a feather once was. If one were to allow Surrealist association to take hold, every little dot and divot on the book could be viewed as an eye itself.