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In 1958, the French artist Yves Klein said, "Blue is the invisible becoming visible. It is beyond the dimension of other colours." He then saw his iconic International Klein Blue (IKB) as a symbol of infinity and timelessness. The unique color, often said to be "bluer than blue," became the basis for many of Klein's works and inspired generations of artists, fashion designers and designers.
For us, IKB has become a source of admiration but also a challenge. A colourful definition is one thing. But finding exactly the perfect bookbinding materials - papers, cardboards or canvases - in this iconic shade proved to be quite a challenge.
In our newsletters, we often feature the world's leading paper, canvas and board brands, among which we at Hässlers are constantly searching for the golden grail for each unique order. However, the colour palettes of the different suppliers are often rather complementary and form a coherent set. Finding the ideal tone for a book or box is not difficult. However, when a client comes directly to you with a request for the "bluest blue IKB", you solve the opposite problem. Such a blue is not very common in manufacturers' comprehensive colour concepts.
We have already dealt with several orders with the IKB requirement. Most recently with our client Kristiana Ghiuri's Cooking book. The book was to be just like Kristiana's recipes - exciting, bold and full of intense flavours. We designed an open Swiss binding that shows the raw spine of the notebook and admits thread stitching, all in sturdy linen-covered boards with perfectly matched accessories. Of course, the demand for luxury and perfection did not surprise our workshop. Also, printing the block on the gorgeous Arctic Volume Ice Swedish paper and sewing it were actually routine. The holographic embossing into coarse canvas and the fully hand pasting into the plates were more challenging. The really hard part, though, was finding the bluest blue across the materials.
In our search for a canvas for the cover of the Swiss binding we looked through all our swatch books and finally chose Peyer's Duchesse Orientblau, which could not be more blue. We found the bookmarks in Germany at Friebe - Textilwerk Carl Friedrich GMBH & Co. And just when we thought we had won, it turned out that the real problem was yet to come - finding the right IKB for the cardboard cover sewn to the beginning and end of the book block.
Christiana and I went through absolutely every pattern book from England to Japan. No exaggeration. No shade of blue matched - it was either too dark or too light, with too much purple or too much "baby blue" etc. We didn't want to give up, but when even Takeo from Japan didn't have a blue that suited us, we considered just printing the cover in Pantone.
At the last minute, we got our hands on a swatch book from Koehler Paper in Germany, which we had never heard of before. Koehler has a very traditional range of coloured papers that look almost ordinary and "unfashionable" in the competition. However, it was in their portfolio of bold and sort of "honest" colours that we found ROYAL blue. And it was exactly the right one!
Yves Klein has truly created an icon with his IKB. And it's interesting to realise how hard it is to get close to it. It was an amazing experience. Because in our bookbinding adventures, we don't like to compromise. At Hässlers, it's not like we give you a few options to look at and feel and that's it. We consider finding the right colour, material, construction, and even small details to be crucial. But we never take it as some kind of martirium. On the contrary! Every job is only exciting and even fun if you take it really honestly.
