Les Échappemens à repos comparés aux echappemens à recul; et Examen des dernières observations de Monsieur de La Lande 1755

Jean Jodin crafted this book in France in the mid-18th century, during the height of the Enlightenment. Bound in leather, it’s adorned with gilded detailing. Consider the culture of the book in this era. It was a time when literacy was growing, but access to knowledge was still deeply stratified. Books like this one, especially with such elaborate binding, would have been luxury objects, signifying not just knowledge, but also wealth and status. The gold tooling—the crown and heraldic animals—speak to a specific kind of power, likely adorning the book of a member of the aristocracy. What does it mean to hold knowledge—literally within your hands—when that knowledge and the object containing it are inaccessible to so many? The beauty of the binding creates a tension, a feeling of privilege and exclusion. The gilded surface becomes a reflection of the social structures of the time, where access to information and the power it conveys were far from democratized.