| On this page I hope to show all of the various imprints on the 1759 dentelle à l'oiseau binding. In Comparative Diagram 1, I show greatly enlarged photos of the title label on the spine. A flatbed scanner is next to useless in reproducing a clear image of imprints on a curved surface such as this one. Photographs on the other hand are not without issues in this regard. I show two examples here due to the fact that a single photo does not show us everything. Basically it is a problem of exposure, not enough light (brightness) or too much. Together though we can see most of the important details and these just happen to match Barber's PAL 3. |
|
Giles Barber has called it a 'grotesque', perhaps due to the fact that these tools are often used to create what has been called la reliure "à la grotesque". I have tackled this subject on a previous page (see this),
Boyet and Padeloup both had tools like this although not identical. We should have a specific name for these particular tools rather than to call them a grotesque that may be confusing. When I started looking again for this kind of tool, I knew that Dubuisson had used something similar but as a single imprint but not a palet made up of a series of them and I was greatly surprised to find this exact spine panel imprint in Barber's catalogue. He has only one binding example for it, W.Cat.505. Unfortunately he does not show this binding but rather a frontispiece from this book, still this is a blessing as it shows partially the inner roulette and in his information for W.Cat.505 he describes it as ROLL 74, we have shown on numerous pages that this is indeed an imprint from a Dubuisson tool and so we can reasonably assume that PAL 3 also derives from the Dubuisson workshop. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, we see again PAL 28, that we showed previously on page 5. I must admit to being fooled into thinking that the imprints at the top of the spine were part of a simple drawer-handle roulette, however when you search for these roulettes the first thing you find is that very few if any that are handles accompanied by a triangular block between them (and there are many of these) will be found with the ends of the handles actually touching each other. Thus you do not see this model in the midst of hundreds of similar roulettes, this should have been the first red flag. Eventually I found the solution (he says blushing) this is not a roulette but PAL 28 with the upper part missing. Looking at the PAL 28 examples at the bottom of the spine is not helpful as you do not really see much of the lower handles. Anyway this mystery is now solved. On the next page I am going to show some diagrams that suggest that Delorme employed PAL 28 extensively while I am not sure that Dubuisson ever did. |
| In Comparative Diagram 5 we see our 1759 spine panel compared with a 1757 panel that has been extracted from a binding that we have studied previously. (see this and this), compared with pd-46-6 pair imprints shown on this page. |
| In Comparative Diagram 8, I have assembled some imprints that that are common to both bindings. Imprint pd-6 although not found in the decoration of the 1759 spine panels is an important part of its decoration. Similarly pd-7-2 is not found in the 1759 spine panels but is anyway a very important Dubuisson favorite, that I hope to present in a future page. We see on the raised bands a pallet common to both bindings, this looks to be similar to ROLL 4 shown by Barber, however he gives a distance of 22 mm between 4 peaks where as the Dubuisson example is only about 14 mm. This needs more research and might not be a roulette anyway. |
| In Comparative Diagram 9, we see a collection of the main imprints found in the decoration of our 1759 binding, leaving out the pallet mentioned above as I do not have a good complete example to show. Seymour De Ricci once referred to this sort of imprint as a zig-zag, (pd-zz-pallet). |
|
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. |
| Virtual Bookings, created by L. A. Miller | return to the Home page of VIRTUAL BOOKBINDINGS |