Back in Australia late in 1978, Herel was offered work by visionary German artist/educator, the late Udo Sellbach, who had been appointed head of the Canberra School of Art. Alert to Herel’s exceptional achievement as a printmaker and to the creative richness offered in the production of the livre d’artiste, he appointed him to establish a department and workshop in the art school (now part of the ANU) for the teaching of artists’ books. It was life-changing for Herel and his young family, and for the generations of students who studied in his wonderfully named “Department of Graphic Investigation”.

With Bouchard, Herel created the Labyrinth Press in 1980, with Herel working in Canberra at the Canberra School of Art and Bouchard in St Jean de Losne, near Dijon. Together they chose texts. Herel worked on the plates of images to be printed and sent to France and Bouchard on the typography and design. Until Bouchard’s death in 2008, they jointly created a body of 21 livres d’artiste (artists’ books) for which they were honoured in France, and which State Library Victoria (through the vision of Des Cowley) and the National Library in Canberra have collected.

These limited-edition publications are a collaborative endeavour unlike any other. Artists’ books bring together elements of poetry, printmaking, typography and papermaking, that combine – in this constellation of ideas and imagery and sensitive artisanal skills – to create an object, the livre d’artiste, that is a marriage of the visual and the literary and whose intimacy invites, intensifies and transforms our experience of both.

At Bouchard’s death in 2008, Herel was working on the book Sequelle, which was published by Librairie Nicaise in Paris and awarded the coveted Jean Lurcat Prize in France in 2009. Later that year, he was made a chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government. Following his retirement from teaching in 1998 and relocation to Melbourne, he accepted a visiting fellowship at Monash University to establish “The Monash University and Australian Print Workshop Artist Book Studio”. In 2007, Herel established the mischievously named Uncollected Works Press from his home in Fitzroy, Melbourne.

The award of a creative fellowship at State Library Victoria (2014-15) to undertake research into a significant collection of books formerly belonging to the French poet Paul Valery (1871-1945), rescued him from profound melancholy. This project led to the creation of a series of artists’ books responding to Valery’s writings. The death of his beloved wife, Dorothy, in 2016, was devastating and it was some years before he could work again.

A charming and self-effacing man, Herel’s greatest pleasure was to quietly share his latest livre d’artiste with his friends and visitors to his home. In a rare statement, he wrote the following to accompany an exhibition in 2010: “Working, I begin to feel an inner smile – and then I know, in that quiet timelessness, that my work propitiates the solitary soul.” His exquisite body of work is a gift to the world.

He is survived by his daughters, Sophie and Emilie, and his grandchildren, Amy, Sam and Jana.