| Here is a binding that is found found on the University of Glasgow Library flickr page, I have copied their description below, for a fuller reference see the main library entry for this item here. |
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Provenance:
Capello family, Venice (possible owners): overpainted coat of arms - see Decoration below.
Louis Jean Gaignat (1697-1768), Secretary to King Louis XV: Gaignat sale, 1769, lot 1979 in Guillaume de Bure, 'Bibliographie instructive: supplement ... ou catalogue des livres de feu M. L.J. Gaignat', 2 vols (Paris: 1769).
William Hunter (1718-1783), physician and anatomist: purchased by Hunter at the Gaignat sale through his agent, Jean-Baptiste Dessain, for 563 livres: see 'Dessain-Hunter correspondence' (University of Glasgow Library, MS Gen. 36, f. 25r).
University of Glasgow: Hunterian bequest, 1807; Hunterian Museum bookplate on front pastedown, with former shelfmark "Ad.9.17". Binding: France, 18th-century olive green morocco with gold-tooled dentelle decoration; gold-tooled spine; marbled endpapers; gilt-edged leaves; pink silk bookmark; ascribed by J.B. Oldham to Jacques Antoine Derome in his 'Notes on bindings in the Hunterian and general libraries in Glasgow University' (University of Glasgow Library, MS Gen. 759, p.4). Housed in a green buckram-covered box, Size: 273 x 170 mm. |
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It is stated the Jean-Baptiste Dessain, acting as an agent for William Hunter, purchased this binding at the 1769 auction of the affairs of Louis-Jean Gaignat who passed away in 1768. Gaignat, a rich collector who lost very early his wife and daughter, devoted most of his fortune to the acquisition of works of art and books.
Counselor Secretary to the King Louis XV and Receiver General, bibliophile and art lover. He specified in his will, that the sale of his collections should be done in detail in order to provide the amateurs with the pleasure which he himself had had in collecting them. he possessed beside a large collection of works of art, one of the most beautiful libraries of his time (French Gothic, heterodox); his sale occured in April-May of 1769. I have searched the Auction Catalogue for this sale and little is said concerning this item. Supplement a la Bibliographie instructive, ou Catalogue des livres du Cabinet de feu M. Louis-Jean Gaignat. Tome 1 / ... dispose et mis en ordre par Guill.-Francois de Bure le jeune,... Publisher (Paris) Publication date: 1769. Shown below is a copy of this that can be found in Gallica (click here to see it) someone has noted all the sale prices in this copy and we can see that this is certainly the correct one with a price of 563 livres. The average man in France at this time, earned about 500 - 600 livres a year, today the average salary in metropolitan Paris is $59,000 per year. Lets imagine that this book cost the buyer the equivalant of about 60 thousand dollars. Nowhere is it stated that it has been bound by Derome, but I suppose that if Dessain had it bound after the auction, that bit of information would be shown in the Glascow files? |
| If you copy and paste the phrase "exemplar elegans & integrum editionis rarissime" into Google, which is supposedly searching trillions upon trillions of documents, it can only find one example of it and it comes from this Catalogue, I think though it might mean an elegant and complete copy of this rare book. Someone is bound to write in to mention that the nominative feminine plural of rarissimus is rarissimae which in fact is what has been written "exemplar elegans & integrum editionis rarissimæ" What we wanted to know is whether the binding of this book was decorated... perhaps exemplar elegans translates as decorated by Derome? |
| In the information given for this binding it is stated that the binding was ascribed by J.B. Oldham to Jacques Antoine Derome. In the decorative detail shown above we do see some imprints that in fact derive from the tools of J A Derome, the question remains, just how many of these tools were his, and whether or not they we employed by Derome the jeune on this binding. What we know is that this bindings was made before 1769. The imprint pair shown below, catalogued tentatively as dj-46a-2 and 46-b2, are possibly tools that J A Derome passed on to Derome le jeune, that were used by him in the early period of his career and then later replaced by other tools. Jean-Pierre Jubert working in Derome's workshop sometime after 1771 appears to have borrowed these tools, using them after Derome seems to have stopped using them. This is only my supposition however it may be that these tools will serve as a sort of chronological marker. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see something that escaped my notice until now, perhaps due to the picture quality of the Glasgow Ad.9.17 binding that is almost as good as the Palace de Versailles coffret V 6176 photo. I wanted to use the exactly sized Coffret dj-31b imprint to test and rescale the Ad.9.17 dj-31b imprint to be able to then resize the digital image of the binding to its correct size. When I was working on this I noticed that the circular dj 26 imprints were not exactly the same. This interesting discovery inspired Comparative Diagram 2. This is a quick assembly of these imprints from various Derome bindings, no attempt has be made to arrange them chronologically as we do not have enough information for all these bindings to do it. However we know that certain bindings do have a more or less fixed date, such as 1770 Almanach Royal, and the 1766 Jubilee bindings (both are show with the date underlined), also I noted that the 1764 binding does not have these imprints in fact most bindings that I would consider as pre 1764 do not. Further to this it looks like imprint dj-29 shown as 'A' in Comparative diagram 2, arrives before the dj-26 which themselves look to be only ringed examples of dj-29. What we see is that there is another variety of dj-26 shown as 'C' in the diagram. I am not sure when it appears however it can be seen on the 1770 Almanach, and will have to be called dj-26-2. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3 we can see just how close the Derome 26 and the Dubuisson 26 are, who copied who remains to be answered. It is too early to say whether or not these tools or the lack of them can serve as chronological markers, they are very small and need to be carefully catalogued and inventoried before attempting a thorough comparative study. |
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