Fryderyk Skarbek: Memoirs [2009] – “keyboard” binding

Fryderyk Skarbek, *Memoirs*, Warsaw 2009

(Fryderyk Chopin Institute; edited, with an introduction and footnotes by Piotr Mysłakowski; first expanded edition)

Fryderyk Florian Skarbek (1792–1866), born in Toruń, was an economist, a lecturer in political economy at the University of Warsaw, a novelist, a historian, and a social activist, as well as the author of *The History of the Duchy of Warsaw*. He was involved in prison reform. He spent his childhood in Żelazowa Wola, on the Skarbek family estate, where Mikołaj Chopin served as a teacher. It was there that Fryderyk Chopin was born in 1810.

Skarbek’s memoirs were first published in Poznań in 1878 in an incomplete version. The 2009 edition by the Fryderyk Chopin Institute, edited by Piotr Mysłakowski, is a complete edition of the memoirs: richly illustrated, with footnotes and biographical notes. Among the illustrations are paintings by Skarbek himself, including the oil painting “Landscape with a Windmill.” This is a must-read for lovers of Chopin and the history of Warsaw.

This copy underwent conservation treatment at the Antykwariat Polski workshop. The book block was mechanically cleaned, and the sections were re-sewn by hand, restoring the volume’s structural stability.

A leather binding handcrafted from the finest materials by master artisans at the Antykwariat Polski bookbinding workshop. Natural leather; the front cover is shaped like a piano keyboard and made of leather.

The mission of Antykwariat Polski is based on a simple belief: valuable Polish books deserve to survive. Not as exhibits behind glass, but as living objects—preserved, bound with the utmost artisanal care, and ready for centuries to come in a collector’s library.