| I found this Almanach Royal by searching through all the old Auctions at Sotheby's. One line of thinking is that an Almanach is very likely to have been bound in the year it was printed, this gives us a strong chronological grasp on the imprints. The corner tool is very important on these later and or post Douceur bindings as we have seen on page 10. As soon as I started to compare this corner tool with one on a 1764 binding that is sure to be a Douceur (due to possessing d-13 imprints), I ran into a huge can of worms. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, we see that the corner tools are not the same, the look similar however the 1765 imprint has been reversed from the usual positioning of this imprint. we do not need an overlay to see that these are not the same, just in size they are different, now this presents us with a problem. Next we try to look at a tool that Barber has cataloged as FR 43. |
| When you look at these FR 43 imprints you can see right away that the 1765 imprints look like the same imprint, however when I did the overlay, Barber's type model was fully 10 percent larger, when I enlarged the 1765 binding 10% , the imprints matched so well, I was really baffled The 1765 binding on a Royal Almanach was stated to have a height of 19.4 cm, this is the standard height of many of the Royal Almanachs so we can be reasonably sure it is correct, how can we explain that Barber's model is 10% out? In Comparative Diagram 4, I have resized the 1765 binding to see just how closely they match up. |
| I was really starting to get worried, something was wrong if this 1765 was authentic... then I had a brainwave, I decided to test an imprint from a Doucer binding in the BnF. This would proove one way or another if Barber's type model was the right size, and if there was a size discrepency, the BnF imprint would show it, sure enough there was a size difference as you can see in Comparative Diagram 5, however this is an amazing copy of Douceurs tool, even at high resolutions you can be fooled, overlays did not reveal anything particular. When you know they are different you can start to search for something telltale. I have marked it with a green arrow, it is in the termination of the outermost leaf where you can see something is a little bit different. If anything the shape of the copy is better than the original. This points out again, how size and measurement are critical comparative elements. When you know the exact size of a single imprint you can use it as a way to resize a binding of unknown dimensions, and very accurately, therefore just the reverse is true if an imprint is 10% smaller than it should be the binding must be proportionately scaled. |
| In Comparative Diagram 6, we see again that the 1765 imprints only look similar but are not exactly the same. This is satistfying in a way because it partially confirms that the imprints that we were looking at on the previous page are in fact from Douceur's tools. |
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click here to return to the INDEX of the 1749 Henault pages. click here to see the INDEX of the 2017 pages. click here to return to the HOME page. see below links to previous work |
| Even experts are sometimes wrong, before you spend thousands on a book, please do your own research! Just because I say a certain binding can be attributed to le Maitre isn't any kind of guarantee, don't take my word for it, go a step further and get your own proof. In these pages I have provided you with a way of doing just that. |
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