| The binding shown about could qualify as an early Derome le jeune binding, we see certainly many of his fathers tools being used here and few of the later large imprints that are very hard to distinquish from the Dubuisson tools. Particularly of interest is a tool that I have examined previously, jad-46a-6 and jad-46b-6 similar to pd-46a-6 and pd-46b-6. The J A Derome tool is nearly identical and appears only rarely in Derome le jeune bindings. Even more convincing is the palette used by J A Derome, here it is again in a 1752 binding, this is scarry, because we could also consider that the binding shown on the previous page Journal Historique 1715 a 1754 may have also been made in this same period. i.e. 5 or six years before Derome le jeune started his career. We only need to find a 100% J A Derome binding with the famous Derome fer à l'oiseau, and the glory of the Derome le jeune dentelle will melt. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I present a J A Derome spine compartment, (that may not be from 1745), compared with a spine compartment from our 1752 Quesnel binding, that I suspect was made sometime later by Derome le jeune. However we have no proof of that, and what we are faced with is the possibility that J A derome made both of these bindings, in which case the tools that we usually attribute to Derome le jeune such as the fer à l'oiseau are actually those of his father... I don't think so, but who knows? What we have shown so far is that the supposed early Derome le jeune bindings show a strong mixture of J A Derome tools. |
| Above I show the only real Jacques-Antoine Derome dentelle binding that I am certain of and now this Quesnel binding shown at the top of the page is further confirmation this fact with an identical palette, here we see the same tools, but were they applied by J A Derome or Derome le jeune? and when were these bindings executed... only further research will answer these questions. |
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Probably one of the most puzzling mysteries in the J A Derome history is the obsession of Louis-Marie Michon (1900-1958) with this binder. Michon was convinced that many of Pierre-Paul Dubuisson's bindings were in fact the work of J A Derome, even those bindings with Dubuisson's ticket inside were still claimed by Michon to be the work of Derome. How could this of happened especially when Dubuisson named himself firstly as a dorer, while J A Derome was thought by previous experts not to even own dorer tools. The binding by J A derome shown above, the only one I know, may hold the key to this mystery. Derome has created around the outside of this book cover a border that is usually made with a roulette, however in this case I believe he used a short palette repeatedly to get the same effect as a roulette. Dubuisson was using an almost identical tool the same way as early as 1754, where it can be seen in the mosaic bindings that he created on the Almanach Royals for the King of Spain Fernando VI. (I have documented these Almanachs here). Now that we have at last a true J A Derome example of this palette, the part of this mystery is becoming more obvious. This imprint is so small that you cannot see the difference between the two without significant magnification and even then identification is not easy because Dubuisson often over lapped the endings to join the whole in a continuous unbroken chain, and it is only by carefully observing the endings that you can easily separate the two binders. Dubuisson's example had distinctly different endings, much like an arrow with a point at one end and feathers on the other, where as the Derome example has points at both ends (see Comparative Diagram 3). Here then is a way to identify the bindings of each binder and put an end to the confusion. One must surely ask why did these two binders use these nearly identical tools, who copied who and why? Hopefully J A Derome had only one type of these tools. On the next page we are going to look at another Derome binding that also a bit of a mystery. |
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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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