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Now we come to Barber's W.Cat.239. that is another of the 3 bindings that he has referenced to DCT 25. We see here tools that are also found on the Bisiaux signed binding, and also tools that appear on earlier Douceur bindings, yet this binding is from at least 1785 and thus these douceur tools are a bit mysterious, Below in Comparative Diagram 2, we find bindings that I once thought were identical, that the color version, found in a Sothebys auction, was the same as the black and white example from the 1936 catalogue
La bibliothèque de feu Édouard Rahir : Quatrième partie : Livres armoriés des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. However they only look identical, some of the dots are not in the same positions, the date of the publications that these bindings cover are 1750 and 1751 respectively. It would be interesting to know, exactly how this happened, identical bindings are usually only found in sets, perhaps these bindings once belonged to the same person who asked for all the bindings in his collection be bound in this way, and indeed this style is unusual for Douceur in this time period. It is the corner tool Barber's DCR 9 (shown in Comparative Diagram 3) that clearly links these bindings. The question is, how can this imprint be found on bindings that are separated by more than 30 years, and I have found another that is on a 1746 binding (shown below, No. 57 CERVANTÈS ) with imprints that match a Douceur binding of 1754. So we must assume that some or all of these imprints derive from the tools of Louis Douceur. How then can we explain some of these imprints in the bindings of Bisiaux? In our pages on Plumet and Fetil we know that they also worked with Douceur tools possibly as early as 1750 suggesting that they were working for Douceur from this date and continued working in Douceurs workshop long after Douceur had retired from the slavery of this world. The great and fortunate thing is that we can find in the Bisiaux signed binding the same imprints that we see on W.Cat.239, this binding links many important bindings and so I have included here in Comparative Diagram 1, Barber's catalogued tools from this binding. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, we see a very interesting fact that concerns an imprint that we looked at closely on page 2, b-34a. There is a defect in this tool that is clearly evident in 1780 and yet is missing from the 1750 examples (A, B, C, D), we can see that there was anyway some problem with this tool in this location even in 1750 that gradually worsened over time. Examples "X" and "Y" are from binding No.1693 Sallust (page 3) and "E", "F" are from page 2, the 1785 Paroissien. The imprints without the flaw, that may actually be from tools owned by Douceur, can be catalogued as d-34a and 34b, while the imprints from a later period with flaws, catalogued as b-34a and 34b. |
| In Comparative Diagram 5, notice d-2-4 this same imprint is found on the CERVANTÈS |
| In Comparative Diagram 6, we try to compare these imprints, Barber's tool model derives from W.Cat.239. This is evident as you see the same defect in his model as found on the extracted example shown below it, What we need to consider is that the W.Cat.239 examples are from 1785 or later while the 1105 examples are fresh from 1754 and much clearer. so much so that we may doubt even that these are the same tools however my guess is that they are. |
| In Comparative Diagram 7, I have merged the DCT 53 imprints from the 1754 Lucrece to form a pair similar to the W.Cat.239 example (1) then copied my merged pair and added an excessive amount of contrast (2). In the merged pair (3) I have labeled the interior negative spaces "a", "b", and "c", the shapes of these match the W.Cat.239 examples where "a" is largest, "b" is significantly smaller than "a". The inside right lower leaf marked "d" is significantly smaller than the left side "e". These matching details suggest that these imprints are all from the DCT 53 pair. |
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