RICORDO AFRICA ORIENTALE

32 photographic views of Addis Ababa folded leporello style into a hardcover volume with a pictorial cover, map of Africa as endpapers, slightly worn at the edges, the photographs are in very good condition.

Leporello and Concertina Books The term leporello refers to printed material folded into an accordion-pleat style. Also sometimes known as a concertina fold, it is a method of parallel folding with the folds alternating between front and back. The name likely comes from the manservant, Leporello, in Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni. Famed rogue and lover Don Giovanni (in Italian – also known as Don Juan in Spanish) has seduced so many women that when Leporello displays a tally of his conquests, it unfolds, accordion-style, into a shockingly long list. Many leporellos are used as a way of telling a story, while others are purely visual.

In the Victorian era, leporellos were quite commonly used as travel souvenirs, depicting beautiful, panoramic scenes of the places travelers had just seen, customs and culture of the region and the like. They are often used in illustrated children’s works, as well. Collectors of books and paper ephemera will love their scarcity and delicate beauty.https://www.abebooks.com/blog/index.php/2013/05/16/leporello-and-concertina-books/