| We can see in the enlarged spine palettes shown above, a floral palette and a Dubuisson rodeo palette. The floral palette is another mystery, I have not seen this palette before. Barber has classified this sort of palette in his category VIII - Floral and foliate pallets, We can see that this was a popular style that is sometime found with with a mixture of flowers and pomegranate motifs however he does not show this exact type in his catalogue, strongly suggesting that he never encountered it. In Comparative Diagram 1, we see two of Barbers examples, they are shown at 300dpi where as our 1757 example above, is shown at 600dpi and appears of a similar proportion although being only half the size of the Barber examples. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I show a selection of matching segments from examples of Dubuisson's rodeo palette, These all appear to match up, however our ANL 1757 catalogue example (c) is the least descript of all examples, lacking critical details due to either age or poor application or possibly may not even be the same tool. This then, in lacking detail appears similar to the pd-4-2 imprints found in the spine panels. All rodeo examples are however the same size and show a similar deviation in the rows of dots with one dot being higher than the rest (found under the alphabetical designator). |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we see the lowest spine panel that is above the palettes shown at the top of the page, here we see some interesting and relatively rare imprint pairs. In the corners we see Dubuisson imprint pair pd-46-6 that I have detailed on a previous page. These tools appear in the early Dubuisson mosaiques c.1750 and are rarely seen after this period. They look very similar to tools employed by J.A Derome, I have partialy detailed the differences here. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, I have reproduced the diagram from the page mentioned above, here we see a flaw in pd-46a-6 pointed out with a green arrow, that has also been indicated in Comparative Diagram 3. |
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I would like to digress here for a moment in presenting Comparative Diagram 5, This image is from from the Gallica digital reproduction of L'eloge de la folie, traduit du latin d'Erasme par M. Gueudeville . Nouvelle edition revûe et corrigée sur le texte de l'edition de Basle. Ornée de nouvelles figures. Avec des notes Author : Érasme (1469-1536). Auteur du texte Publisher : [Paris, Jean-Augustin Grangé, Jacques-François Mérigot, Charles II Robustel et Jean-Noël Le Loup.] M. DCC LI Publication date : 1751. Many years ago I pointed out the absolute failure of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France to recognize the importance of Pierre-Paul Dubuission. If you attempt to search the Bnf for examples of Dubuisson's work you will only find two, these are listed in their scant bibliographic information about him. Both of these bindings have been decorated with Dubuisson's plaques, perhaps suggesting that BnF knows of no other work by Dubuission, who I have shown to be certainly one of the greatest decorative bookbinders and artists of the 18th century. This is scandalous and persists even today! HOWEVER I have discovered within the labyrinth of Gallica's digital reproductions an amazing example of one of Dubuisson's spectacular dentelles. You can see this for yourself by visiting this link I show then in Comparative Diagram 5 a spine panel from this Gallica reproduction, where I have again pointed out with green arrows the defect that can be found in most or all of the pd-46a-6 examples. |
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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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