>Jan Heine and Jean-Pierre Pradères are putting out a book on "The
>Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles":
>http://www.mindspring.com/~heine/bikesite/bikesite/goldenage.html
I was planning an announcement to the CR list... but the web update was faster!
'The Golden Age of Handbuilt Bicycles' is a 168-page coffee-table book with studio photographs of 50 of the most beautiful bicycles. It all started when I met the photographer, Jean-Pierre Pradères, who had worked on the Guggenheim's best-selling "The Art of the Motorcycle." He is a vintage bicycle enthusiast, who owns several wonderful machines (His wife's Herse was featured in VBQ Vol. 3, No. 1.)
He told me how he and his assistant traveled around France and set up studio in barns and cellars to photograph the motorbikes in the Guggenheim book. As the editor of Vintage Bicycle Quarterly, I have been lucky to see many wonderful machines. Some have been presented in Vintage Bicycle Quarterly, but I always felt they deserved to be shown in full color. So I remarked casually "Wouldn't it be nice to do something like the Guggenheim book on bicycles?"
Several years later (and many, many dollars and Euros later, for even a "free" photographer is very expensive), the result is this book.
We spent all of last summer traveling around France to photograph various bikes for the book. It was an adventure to see how barns, cellars, even a carport were converted into photo studios. It was amazing to work on all these amazing machines to make sure they were correctly assembled (switching lights, tires, etc.). I even got to ride some, like a Vélocio Bi-Chain, a Hirondelle Retro-Direct where you pedal backwards to go uphill, the only surviving Faure and a number of "common" bikes by Herse, Routens and others. Later, Jean-Pierre and his assistant came to Seattle to photograph more bikes from local collections.
Each bike we included was selected for its historic significance, beautiful craftsmanship and original condition. We considered over 100 bikes and photographed almost 70, before narrowing our choices to the 50 bikes included in the book. Historical photos, most of which never have been published before, show the bikes in competition and with their original owners.
Production values are high: Full color, printed by an artbook printer in France, hardcover with sewn binding, 168 pages, etc.
The book will be presented at the Cirque du Cyclisme in Greensboro, NC, on April 29.
Price is $ 60, but until April 15, there is a 15% off subscription offer ($ 51). For now, the book is only available directly from Vintage Bicycle Press: The production cost was high (higher than anticipated), and the discounts demanded by Amazon and others would not allow us to break even! If there are left-overs from the very limited production run, they will be sold through bookstores and bicycle shops at a later date.
For more information, check out
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com/
--
Jan Heine, Seattle
Editor/Publisher
Vintage Bicycle Quarterly
c/o Il Vecchio Bicycles
140 Lakeside Ave, Ste. C
Seattle WA 98122
http://www.vintagebicyclepress.com