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On this page we are looking at Barber's W.Cat. 248 with his description included. While I have been sometime critical of Barber's attributions, I have to admit that he is one step ahead of me in dating endleaves, he notes in this description that the endleaves are watermarked 1768, without this very precise information it would be hard to guess exactly when this binding was executed. Now here is Barber's conundrum as he knows that Douceur was near to his death bed in 1768 and so Barber is forced to concede that it may not have been made by Douceur. I almost think he turned a blind eye to the evidence that there is very little if anything in the decoration of this binding that looked like something Douceur would do. Now if Barber had of come across the giant 1772 Fetil binding that is boldly shown as lot 264 in Édouard Rahir's famous 1910 catalogue Livres dans de riches reliures des XVIè, XVIIè, XVIIIè et XIXè siècles. (see my page on this) he would have lost some sleep trying sort out where Douceur ends and Fetil takes over. Really it would be nearly impossible for Barber not to have seen this binding as Rahir is required reading for this kind of work. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, one cannot fail to notice the shared imprints found on these bindings! I have detailed previously the important Fetil tools found on the 264 RECETTES binding. (see this) |
| The next binding we need to look at is W.Cat.361 that shares common tools with W.Cat. 248 as you can see in the notes, particular is the pallet at the base of the spine (PAL 87) that is not shown in the W.Cat. 361 reproduction. We can see in the information that Barber gives about these bindings and most others in his book, a complete list of the tools used. However in the case of W.Cat. 361 he has omitted a very important imprint (rf-3) (see this), and one wonders if this is not a deliberate omission? This single imprint that turns out to be Fetil's often used signature tool, would overturn Barber's Douceur attribution to these bindings and associated tools, some can be seen still in use years after Douceur's passing in 1769. |
| Here I must point out another very important imprint, that I have shown on the lower part of a previous page ((see this) and show below in Comparative Diagram 2. |
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In Comparative Diagram 2, I show Barber's FL 147, this fleuron is prominent in the corner decoration of Plumet's 1751 signed binding and also found here on W.Cat. 361 as well as the BnF example RES-V-724. It is interesting to read the BnF description of this binding, perhaps written by Fabienne Le Bars, here they have swallowed Barber's story/attribution hook line and sinker. There is no mention of Plumet or Fetil even though we can show ample proof that their tools are on this binding. It seems that the highest expertise that the French Bibliotheque nationale can muster is that of Giles Barber, which we have shown is rife with confusion. In this regard I want to show another of Barber's catalogued tools (FR 43) that derives from both the W.Cat. 248 and W.Cat. 361. As we have demonstrated, some of the tools used by Fetil or Plumet are very well made copies that are easily mistaken as originals, and Barber's reproduction of this pair of imprints only makes matters worse. |
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In Comparative Diagram 4, we compare Barber's FR 43 type models with imprints that derive from a 1765 Almanach Royal reproduced in a Sotheby's 2014 action (see this),
Livres Et Manuscrits
18 December 2014, Paris. In as much as these imprints are found on an Almanach Royal we can be reasonably sure that this binding was made sometime around 1765 i.e. around the same time as W.Cat. 361. Click on this diagram to see an enlargement. The green arrows indicating features that probably indicate that all of these imprints derive from the same tools, the blue arrows point out parts of Barber's models that do not correspond to the 1765 imprints. We can be relatively certain that the unusual elements marked with the blue arrows are in fact errors in the reproduction of Barber's models. We see that these tools were in use from at least 1765 up to and probably after 1768, where as Plumet's bindings seem to be found in the 1751 to 1753 period. We might speculate here in an attempt to resolve this Plumet, Fetil, Douceur question of who did what. by considering that Plumet retired and sold some of his tools to Fetil in the 60's and that Fetil worked as a guilder for Douceur around this time, A time when Louis Douceur was overloaded with work from important clients and getting to old to do everything himself. This then is how we could see a mixture of Fetil and Douceur tools such as in the BnF binding RES-V-724 and it might not be wrong to say that this binding came out of Louis Douceur's workshop, however the decoration was probably executed by Fetil who added his own signature tools to the mix. On the next page we will try to find out whether such speculation is warrented by looking at a 1752 Douceur binding. |
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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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