| You can find this 2019 Christies auction online here. In the auction information on this item we read Reliure du dernier quart du XVIIIe siècle. This means that they have no idea who made these luxuriously spectacular bindings. For hundreds of years this information has been lost, and even today the greatest experts are still in the dark. Who was this most prestigious and highly paid decorative bookbinder of the last quarter of the 18th century? Who decorated the bindings destined for the likes of, Louis XV, Louis XVI and the comte d'Artois? Who was this highly skilled artist, and why does the Bibliotheque nationale de France still not even know his name? Does all of this surprise you? Well fortunately we have now solved this mystery, and identified this master decorator, who, even as recently as 2019, auction experts still failed to recognize even though selling his work for more than 300.000 dollars. When his works get their due acclaim and his name has been restored to its proper place in history I will breath a sigh of relief. We are going to skip the lengthy description of this set, that you can read at your leisure online. However we need to mention that this colorized set appeared in 1782 thirty years after the 1755 printing, and at a cost of nearly a years salary for the average skilled worker. The Christies experts state that these bindings were produced in the Royal workshops, however even if they were, Jean-Babtiste Gosselin decorated them with his own tools, more probably in his own workshops, Christies for their own reasons decided not to show the bindings in the usual full frontal, however we can still see enough of these bindings to provide an immediate proof to support an attribution to Gosselin. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see an enlargement of the Christies photo shown above, number 14 of the Christies 16 high resolution photos used to display this set. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, we compare this Fables decorative detail with Barber's catalogued tool DST 37, that derives from W.Cat 454, that we show on page 2 and which has been verified as a Gosselin binding. Giles Barber did not know at the time that the oval was a separate tool, this has been demonstrated with some of the other W,Cat 454 tools such as DST 38. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we see Barber's excellent reproduction of this imprint compared with an actual high resolution scan, there is no oval and Derome le jeune never decorated W.Cat 454, it was decorated instead by Gosselin as we have shown on previous pages. Click on this image to see it at full size 1200dpi, here you will discover the incredible detail of Gosselin's tools even the smallest dot has been hatched. While Gosselin emulated the work of Dubuisson, his predecessor of 40 years, he also added some of his own very well made tools, that bring his work to a level never previously reached or matched in its perfection, especially when working for important clients, clients of the highest order. |
| In Comparative Diagram 5 we see that the central fleuron of these spine panels is probably the same even though the 102 binding shown below might date to c.1775. |
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In Comparative Diagram 6, I have included the the Maggs Bros information on this binding, where they state that the arms decorating this binding are those of Durfort Duras Marechal de France, searching the internet for these armes I found a description given by Bertrand Hugonnard-Roche for a very similar armes that seems to match the Maggs information ...
Emmanuel-Félicité de Durfort, duc de Duras, fils de Jean-Baptiste, maréchal de France, et d'Angélique-Victoire de Bournonville, naquit le 19 octobre (ou décembre) 1715 ; il prit part à presque toutes les guerres du règne de Louis XV ; il fut envoyé en ambassade en Espagne en 1752 ; créé pair de France en 1757 et maréchal de France le 24 mars 1775, il reçut le commandement de la Bretagne, le gouvernement de la Franche-Comté et la place de premier gentilhomme de la chambre du Roi ; il fit aussi partie de l'Académie Française et mourut à Versailles le 6 septembre 1789. In as much as, Emmanuel-Félicité de Durfort, duc de Duras became marechal de France in 1775 this would suggest that this Gosselin binding was made after that date. |
| In Comparative Diagram 8, we discover that Gosselin's inner dentelle matches perfectly Barber's ROLL 80, thus we can follow Barber's leads to other bindings that he has located, that are also decorated with ROLL 80, bindings that we can assume were probably also decorated by Gosselin, Master bookbinder and decorator extraordinaire. |
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In Comparative Diagram 9, we discover that Gosselin's Fables palette is a match for Barber's PAL 84, we also see that this same palette is also found on the bindings W.Cats 364, 498, 629, 734, that are also decorated with Gosselin's ROLL 80. I do not find any evidence that Le Monnier ever used a similar palette, while the BnF are not able to provide a single example of a binding by J.-C.-H Monnier let alone one with Gosselin's palette on it. Nor does Gallica discover any document with the name of J.-C.-H. Le Monnier. Now after searching high and low in the Manuscript Department of the BnF, I found finally this catalogue file (click here to see this) Encyclopedie, 35 volumes with a large dentelle and a notation (Le Monnier) Ensemble 35 vol. in-fol., mar. r., fil., larges dentelles aux armes et aux chiffres du roi, dos ornés, tr. dor. (Le Monnier.) However a closer look shows that these volumes could not have been bound before 1780. We can find in the BnF binders biographic information that Le Monnier Pare passed away in 1776 (click here to see this) and his son Jean-Charles Henri Lemonnier who worked in the workshop of his father, only worked up to the time of his father's death in 1776 (click here to see this), in that case neither one of them bound this set Encyclopedias that Henri de Rothschild donated to the BnF. |
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EPILOGUE - Comparative Diagram 10 I have just received this photo of No. 31 from 50 Reliures Francaise by Annie Charon 1988 where she states that a J.-C.-H. Le Monnier ticket is found inside these bindings that are from 1780. Now dear reader, I am sure that by now you will recognize that the decoration of this binding was executed by none other than Jean-Baptiste Gosselin! |
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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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