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In March of 2019 I started a series of pages under the heading of The Post Louis Douceur Workshops (see this)
On that page we showed another auction example of the same binding that I show here where they state that there is a Bisiaux ticket inside. At that time I doubted that Bisiaux produced this kind of dentelle binding as all other examples of bindings by Bisiaux were in the style of Bradel.
Now we are going to try solve this mystery first by following up on the auction information.
The binding shown above is found in a 2004 Christies catalogue, Christies November 2004 Collection Michel Wittock, Binders Old Regime
this is the same binding that I show on the Post Louis Douceur page
however in this 2004 Christies auction they give more detailed information about Bisiaux, referencing first a binding found in a 1924 Ripault catalogue
Bibliothèque du Dr. Armand Ripault Livres rares et précieux. I had to search high and low to find a complete example of this catalogue that is in two parts with many plates that are not always in them. Finally I found a bound copy with all the plates at a reasonable price. This copy of the Catalogue was bound in a beautiful half leather binding, which meant that I could not easily scan the double plates and so I have opted for a photo of the all important Bisiaux binding that you see below. The plates have been reproduced by a heliogravure technique that gives a much better image than most modern printed photographs. |
| I was anyway still able to scan some important details of the plate which has been reproduced at 100 percent scale. This is real luxury compared to modern catalogues. We can see from the information about this item 367 that they do indeed mention Bisiaux however they do not say exactly whether or not there was a Bisiaux ticket inside. This binding is nearly identical to another 1780 ANACREON that we documented previously (see this) Obviously these two bindings are by the same decorative artist, and a few common tools in all three of these bindings suggests that they are all by Bisiaux, however one of the most import tools we must look at is the corner tool of the 367 this tool I have detailed previously as a Louis Douceur tool D-11-3 (see this) |
| In Comparative Diagram 2 we see Barbers FR 93 that is undoubtedly the Douceur imprint d-11-3 as the overlay proves. Barber references W.Cat.369 as the source for his example, this is shown in the lower center of this diagram, and you will see that he really failed to capture this tool which is not two tools, that he describes as a pair of fronds. This is a single tool with many parts above and below, which is easy to prove with an overlay such as I show here. This single tool is a key to many mysteries when it comes to bindings that were either some of the last ever made by Louis Douceur or his successors. Another mystery concerns the quite similar corner tool found on the signed Bisiaux binding shown at the top of this page. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I show the corner tool from the Bisiaux signed binding 35 compared with the larger d-11-3 from binding 367. This is possibly an original Douceur tool that has been re-employed in the post Douceur period. While these two tools are different the some of the other tools appear to be the same, i.e. employed on the same bindings, particularly DCT 25. |
| In Comparative Diagram 5, we see that the Bisiaux examples match Barber's DCT 25 and that he has referenced 3 bindings to this tool model. We might suspect that these bindings are also by Bisiaux, we will study these on the next page. |
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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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