| This Dubuisson binding appeared on eBay in January 2023, the seller provided only one photo and that revealed some important flaws, yet it was good enough to entice me to buy it as I recognized what appeared to be some important Dubuisson tools. However the date of publication was given as 1788, that seemed unlikely. A fairly long search turned up some1738 copies, so I assumed that the date must be wrong which is in itself is unusual that a seller would get the date wrong. However if this binding was made in 1738 it would have to be one of the earliest by Pierre-Paul Dubuisson or possibly the work of his father René Dubuisson. Either way it would be interesting to get this binding on my scanner. It finally arrived well packaged and covered with a plastic dust jacket which is a great way to keep books in good condition. I did not want to take it off and decided to scan and photograph the cover with the dust jacket on to see if the scans would be blurred, surprisingly I managed to get some reasonable results. |
| The rodeo pallet at the base of the spine seemed a good way to prove that this was a Dubuisson. Easier said than done though, because many of my examples of this small pallet are old and the details barely visible. I have in the past tried to find details that would help to identify it beyond all doubt (see this). It might actually be a roulette but anyway after some not so convincing diagrams I decided to see if Giles Barber had catalogued this pallet and fortunately he shows many examples of the various forms of this tool. His closest example is PAL 27. (from the Catalogue of Printed Books and Bookbindings: The James A. de Rothschild Bequest at Waddesdon Manor. BARBER (Giles) Published for the Rothschild Foundation, 2013) |
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This is definitely the right one but let us check the bindings that he has referenced to this PAL 27.
First is W.Cat. 245 I show it above with Barber's description, this is an interesting exercise as we are going to prove that this is a binding by Pierre-Paul Dubuisson by the presence of PAL 27 and a printing date of 1746 thus the dentelle on this binding is equally important because you can see it on many Almanach Royals (see this). Although Barber does not attribute this binding to anyone in particular. The next binding in the PAL 27 references is W.Cat. 530. I show it below with Barber's description. This is a 1747 Dubuisson binding with the same spine panel fleuron as W.Cat. 245 (1746) Barber's FL 118 this same fleuron is found on W.Cat.574 and I have detailed this previously (see this) |
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In Comparative Diagram 1, we show with green arrows, distinctive details that are matched in both examples, i.e. the pallet from the spine of our eBay 1738 RECUEIL DES NOUVELLES ORDONNANCES ET REGLEMENS DE LOUIS XV compared to PAL 27. (a) indicating that this dot is significantly lower that the other dots. (b) pointing to the hole that is larger than most others. (c) pointing to a tongue like projection. (d) indicating this hole being off center. The overlay indicating the close correspondence of all elements. In a pallet of such a small size it is highly unlikely that a counterfeit copy of this tool would be able to yield such a precision match. Thus we have now confirmed that the pallet of our 1738 binding is the same as Barber's PAL 27 as well as proofing that this tool belonged to the Dubuisson workshop. Probably this binding was made not long after the publication date of 1738 however at this point we cannot be sure of that. On the next page we will explore some of the other gold tooled imprints from this binding. |
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click here to return to the HOME page. click here to see the INDEX of the 2017 pages. see below links to previous work |
| 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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