(Connaissance et Mémoires, 2007)

Preface by the Vicomte de Rohan, President, La Société des Amis de Versailles

VERSAILLES: The Château and Its Satellites is a sumptuous, limited-edition artist's book reproducing sixty watercolors of the extraordinary châteaux, pavilions, unbuilt projects, and architectural and garden ornaments of the seat of French kings. The book is an unrivaled example of the binder's art and employs printing techniques of exceptional fidelity and precision.

Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, eminent historian of Louis XIV and Director emeritus of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, has called Versailles “a great and magnificent work…I have always been amazed by the realizations of Messrs. Zega and Dams, a body of work of immense artistic—and I dare say intellectual—value.”

Frédéric Didier, Chief Architect of Versailles and the Monuments Historiques de France, writes in his preface to the French edition: “one must be thankful that these two virtuosos have placed their talent, today, in the service of such an undertaking; their achievement, to our greatest enchantment, resuscitates subtleties that one believed forever lost.”

280 pages, format 10 x 13 ½ in. 60 color illustrations and 21 multi-page spreads (two being one-meter-long gate-folds), superbly reproduced using state-of-the-art printing technology (20 micron screens and UV inks) and uncoated Curtis 200 g. vellum paper that recalls the look and feel of the original watercolors.

Bi-color texts. Printed in France; hand assembled and bound in Italy in white silk and slip-cased.

Available in English and French editions, signed and numbered and limited to 400 copies in each language.