| The binding shown above is found in a 1999 LIBRAIRIE SOURGET - MANUSCRITS ET LIVRES PRECIEUX - CATALOGUE N° XX. I saw this binding in a more recent auction catalogue but the image was too small, now finally I have a very good reproduction. Here is the crazy thing about this binding, yesterday I was working on a Padeloup binding (click here to see it) and today I decided to download high resolution images of Padeloup's tools from the BnF Gallica site, I went through all the Padeloup bindings that the BnF has online as well as their inner dentelles and spines, I must have looked at every important Padeloup gold tooled imprint from the beginning of his career until the end of it. Then this Sourget catalogue arrives and they have attributed this binding to Padeloup, I can tell you now, there is not a single imprint from Padeloup's tools on this binding, how then can there be a Padeloup etiquette inside? Padeloup did not decorate this binding and must have paid someone to do it. I noticed a very disctinct look to this binding it reminded me strongly of the only Jacques-Antoine Derome binding that I know of. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see the two bindings together, there is no doubt that both bindings share common tools such as the palette at the base of the spines. In the Comparative Diagrams shown below you will find ample proof that these bindings have been decorated with the same tools by the same artist who uses them in the same way. This can be none other than Jacques-Antoine derome. Up to this point I was considering that Derome le jeune could have made these bindings, however this second example of the same kind of work that predates any possibility that Derome le jeune could have been involved. The Padeloup etiquette is also proof that this binding was made before 1758. We know that Padeloup hired the Dubuissons to decorate his bindings why not J A Derome as well. |
| In all the Comparative Diagrams above you will see that the J A Derome examples (black and white) seem fractionally smaller, so too in Comparative Diagram 6. I suspect that the Derome binding should be 1 percent or so larger, we do not actually know what size it is, while the 1743 Heures Nouvelles may be only slighly bigger than actual size by one or two millimeters, also the spine curvature is to be considered in distorting the size of these letters. I think we have a good case for calling this a Jacques-Antoine binding it is only the second that we can be reasonably sure of. This binding is in itself quite mysterious, the monogramme G B has yet to be solved and the armories of the Sacred Heart in the spine compartments another clue. Devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus can be clearly traced back at least to the eleventh century. It marked the spirituality of Saint Bernard of Clairvaux in the twelfth century and of Saint Bonaventure and St. Gertrude the Great in the thirteenth. |
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| 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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