Literary Objects: Flaubert

Literary Objects: Flaubert catalogues an exhibition at the University of Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum. The exhibit compares object descriptions form the novels of Gustave Flaubert to decorative arts from the Smart Museum’s collection. Flaubert’s writing is filled with physical and emotional detail, and is at times quite erotic. Like all great literature, it remains very contemporary, while rooted in its original era (the nineteenth century).

In designing the book, we wanted to create a typographic environment that reflected the book’s text—contemporary, yet traditional—and felt like an 1860s boudoir, curvaceous yet prim. The catalogue is organized somewhat like a Diderot encyclopedia, with each text and image numbered or lettered.