| Finally my 1998 catalogue LIBRAIRIE SOURGET - MANUSCRITS ET LIVRES PRECIEUX - CATALOGUE N° XVII arrived in the mail. This binding by Louis Douceur is on the back side of the dust cover. Of course I was shocked to see that they have attributed this to Duseuil. When you are an expert and your job is to define books that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars, you ought to be a little more careful. How could anyone attribute a binding to Duseuil? The Bibliotheque nationale de France has not yet found an example of his work to show us. Thoinan boldly states that he has never seen one. I suspect this mess is due to Michon's botchup Reliures mosaiquees du XVIIIe siecle Louis-Marie Michon, Paris, 1956. What ever you do, do not read this book, here is yet more proof that this book has set the expertise of bookbindings back 400 years. It is so enfuriating to find the catalogue expert heaping accolades on Duseuil, this is not Duseuils masterpiece, it is Louis Douceur's masterpiece, may he rest in peace! |
| Last year we researched Louis Douceur's work from a to z on more than 2 dozen pages (click here to see a partial index). The reader can rest assured that we left no stone unturned, and that we have by now, a firm grasp on what the tools of Louis Douceur look like. let us compare them with this Sourget binding. In Comparative Diagram 1, I show a pair of Lous Douceur imprints that were very important in our previous research and fortunately we have some very good high resolution examples, you will see these same imprints at the bottom of the front board, there can be no mistaking these imprints, they are identical, shown here at 600dpi the slightest difference, a missing leaf would be immediately obvious.(click here to see these imprints in some other important Douceur bindings) |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I show another iconic Douceur imprint that was copied my all and sundry (see Barber FL 177). This imprint is particular in the fact that the stem of the flower magically disappears while traversing the leaves. Almost certain proof that these imprints are identical. These imprints are found on an important early binding by Douceur, Reliure de : La Princesse de Navarre, comédie-ballet , feste donnée par le Roy, et son château de Versailles, le mardi 23 février 1745 Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Réserve des livres rares, RES P-YF-243. (click here to see it) |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I show another pair Douceur imprints that can also be found in the same early Douceur binding. Reliure de : La Princesse de Navarre, comédie-ballet , feste donnée par le Roy, et son château de Versailles, le mardi 23 février 1745 Bibliothèque nationale de France, département Réserve des livres rares, RES P-YF-243. (click here to see it) |
| Normally, just these few examples are proof enough that this binding derives from the workshop of Louis Douceur. However there is a big difference between these tools and the later tools of Louis Douceur, fortunately there is one binding that connects them all it is a 1740 binding (click here to see it). The binding of this Sourget item 152, 1739 Office that we are examining was perhaps made in 1739, certainly there are tools here that did not make it to the later bindings and as such have not been previously catalogued. Such as the imprints shown below in Comparative Diagram 5. Barber shows a number of similar tools in his catalogue however does not have this exact pair. His description of a similar fleuron in his catalogue, FL 45 is... "Pomegranate head with trilobe top; two base branches with leaves, base of the stem curving to right" he makes no mention of the several berries! In my catalogues of the major 18th century French decorative bookbinders I have never encountered a binder such as Douceur with so many flower pairs, I started with d-32a and 32b, when I encountered another flower pair they became d-32a-2 and d-32b-2, now we are up to d-32a-15 and 32b-15, not the best system to include a pomegranate pair, perhaps this will be only a temporary measure. Below I have added some of the important imprints from this 1998 Sourget catalogue, Lot 152, 1739 Office binding by Louis Douceur. |
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click here to return to the HOME page. click here to see an INDEX of the 2017 pages. 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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