| This reproduction comes from one of my favorite old catalogs LIVRES ILLUSTRES du XVIIIe siècle. A Paris Librairie Giraud-Badin 128 Boulevard Saint Germain 1955. Lot No. 36 illustrated on Pl. XII. The reproductions are typical of 1950's printing, not great in terms of enlargements, however still a better quality than some of Esmerian's 1972 reproductions. I have to say right now that it is a miracle I found this binding, after searching for days and days without finding anything, a sensible person would have gone on to do something else, it must have been l'esprit of Louis Chenu that pushed me on to find this. When I first saw it I had my doubts, only the corner tools looked right but were they? |
| From Comparative Diagrams 1 and 2 we can see that there is a very stong possibility that the corner imprints found on this 1770 Dorat derive from the tools of Louis Chenu, this is amazing because they are the only obvious imprints on this binding that I recognize, all the other imprints are different from the 20 or more that we have cataloged so far. Here is a major reason why I never found any Chenu bindings I was not looking for tools like these, that represent a major change in the style of his bindings. Perhaps now we are going to find more with these added new tools, that may date from 1770 or quite possibly a few years later. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I present yet another 1766 "Traité général des élémens du chant. Dédié à Monseigneur le Dauphin, par M. l'abbé Lacassagne" in a Chenu binding decorated with the arms of Marie Adélaïde de France, the fourth daughter and sixth child of King Louis XV of France and his consort, Marie Leszczynska. Here you can see the difference between these two bindings. We can see a parallel in the post Douceur bindings of 1770 and onwards, this tendency towards these tools (click here to see this). Which could even suggest that the binding of this1770 Dorat was actually executed around 1780. Otherwise it would seem rather unusual that Chenu suddenly abandoned the greater part of his tools. |
| In the Comparative Diagrams above I have documented provisionally these new tools and in Comparative Diagram 8 made a temporary inventory of most of the imprints that we have found so far. In Comparative Diagram 4 there are 2 new pairs and possibly three other tools that I have not included as they are not that clear enough in this reproduction. These tools will probably be a great help in finding more Chenu bindings, however they are rare, even to have this much of a head start in finding them is only due to being lucky. |
| In the Comparative Diagram 9. I have assembled the imprints of various binders who also used these tools. In the binding at the top of the page Chenu has used three different sizes where as I have only recorded 2 sizes used by the others, perhaps I missed some for Jubert and Gosselin, you can see that these tools were made in specific sizes, the large ones were all nearly the same size. You will have trouble trying to indentify a binder from just these tools alone. |
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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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