Jean - Philippe Arnould is one of a select tribe of dealers in collectable paper objects, and in his gallery on a cobbled street in Brussels he presents a carefully edited array of fashion drawings, book illustrations and historic volumes - as well as decorative sheets printed from his own woodblocks. Valerie Lapierre meets the one - man Belgian contingent of a rarefied world. A story by Marie - France Boyer. INTHE 18TH CENTURYtortoisesheUwas sold here, and in the 19th it was sweets. But what goes on today behind this enigmatic shop window occupied by nothing more than two drawings and three thick richly bound tomes reminiscent of the spell books of a fairy tale? Is it the den of some palaeographer? A hangout for bibliophiles? An art gallery? Inside, there is not much more to see, but everything is carefully arranged. The oversized drawings - of a dice and a jar of flowers - lend a poetic strangeness to the decor. Fine, old - style sheets of white paper are pinned to the wall and colourful patterned paper is displayed in a wooden cabinet, while valuable 18th - century papers from Augsburg with a gold and copper metallic sheen keep company with tiny calligraphic drawings framed like relics. In the bookcase stand rare volumes, like the 1515 Ovid printed by Aldus, the famous Venetian inventor of italic type; an original edition of the journal of Louis XVIs manservant during his imprisonment, incorporating one of the first facsimiles; and 17th - century emblem books, herbals, almanacs and so on. On the wall are a few old photographs, illustrations and numerous glamorous silhouettes sketched by the biggest names in fashion design, such as Lepape, Erte, Gruau et al. In the curios department, there are two delicate hinged prints, rarities found in only a handful of Japanese museums, and small mysteries like the paper cut - outs, here called entetant$ that serve no particular purpose except to be placed in the front of books. There are also beautifully printed single - page short stories to fold and bind at home. So what links all this together? The answer is written, without fanfare, above the shop window: Papers. We are in Brussels, at the premises of French paper fanatic Jean - Philippe Arnould. He began his career at the Louvre and the Jeu de Paume galleries before being appointed to the French Cultural Services in Sweden and Munich; but then in 2009 he settled with his wife and children in Brussels, creating a space dedicated to paper in all its forms. At once a gallery for illustrations and fashion drawings, an antique shop and a craft studio, Papers is a unique place, where each object is unusual and has a story attached to it. Arnould, who has an almost sensual relationship with his material, invites me to marvel at the sound of a sheet of unpressed paper or the powdery feel of another. Time spent in Japan and Sweden reinforced his love of traditional craftsmanship and minimalism. Its very fine, he says about a sheet of handmade paper, but its a luxury one can acquire for just one euro. All paper starts out as cellulose fibres left to settle, but afterwards there are innumerable recipes that result in varying degrees of refinement, he says, with the air of an alchemist. Im interested in all things technical. You have a better appreciation for things when you know how they are made. When you take an interest in a material, you are interested in the thinking behind it; paper has a rich history that sets you dreaming. Arnoulds dreams encompass eighth - century Samarkand and follow the Silk Road; indeed, he spins the history of paper as a fabulous adventure of legendary stuff, a journey that begins in China in the third century bc and culminates in the arrival of paper in Europe just prior to the invention of printing. Its not insignificant that I have chosen as my emblem the camel, an animal which I imagine carrying the first rolls of paper from China or Samarkand. If a simple sheet of white paper says so much about civilisation for this aesthete, how about when artists such as Christian Berard and Sempe have made their mark on it? It was Joelle Chariau, whose gallery in Munich is something of a mecca for illustrative art, that encouraged Arnould to open his own gallery in association with hers. She introduced him to todays great illustrators - Pierre Le - Tan, Sempe, Emmanuel Pierre, Aurore de la Morinerie, Mats Gustafson and Francois Berthoud. I work only with friends now. We form a kind of tribe and I am the Belgian contingent, jokes Arnould. Also, what I find interesting about fashion drawings is that they plunge us into the world of fashion design. With Georges Lepape, you are straight away with Paul Poiret; with Erte, you are with the Russian ballet; with Rene Gruau, at Dior in the 1950s. And see how Antonio Lopez reinterpreted Leger or Lichtenstein in the 1970s. These drawings are so much more than they claimed to be. He also delights in theatre costume sketches, like those of Tom Keogh. He finds it unfair that illustration should be considered superficial. In fact, it is the superficiality of things, their colour, material, patina and so on, that interests me. I adore that quotation of Paul Valery: "Ce quil у a de plus profond dans lhomme, cest la peau." Thats what we are talking about when we speak of costumes, books or bindings. I am interested in any kind of covering. Hence his liking for papiers dominotes, decorated papers used to cover paperback books in the 18th century. Carving his own woodblocks and mixing his own colours, he produces a contemporary version of these himself. Arnould continues to rummage in antique shops, junk shops and flea markets in search of fine papers for his collection. He adores anything hidden, those little things slipped between the pages of books like silent witnesses: a dried flower, a drawing scribbled on a bit of paper, a detached endpaper... With contemporary art getting ever more monumental, miniature art is a kind of resistance, he declares. Yes, its about what is hidden, subde and small, but in the sense of detail. And beauty is in the details, is it not?