| Now that I have been on the lookout for spine plaques, I was quick to notice the telltail signs of the use of plaques here in the spine panels of this 1747 Quinzaine. The panels/compartments have not been decorated with individual small tools but rather, with a single plaque. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see the spine of this 1747 Quinzaine compared with the spine of the 1739 Quinzaine that we looked at in the previous pages. The first obvious thing that alerts us to the use of spine plaques is the incomplete filling of certain panels. The corner tools should fit in the corner no matter what the size of the panel/compartment when you see something like the bottom panel of our 1747 binding, you are right away suspicious and start to measure things. |
| I made Comparative Diagram 2, even before the auction was over, just to confirm my suspicions. This is not the first Douceur binding that I have found with plaque decoration however each time it is a bit of a shock. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I show the difficulty that one encounters in making a model of this plaque. The scan is not clear because of the curvature of the spine and the very limited depth of field of the scanner. While photographs can squew the image due to perspective distortion resulting from the curvature of the spine and or the angle of the shot. Therefore we see that the photographed image is not as wide as the scanned image, although neither of these can produce the correct width of this imprint. These issues also bring to mind the actual tool and how it has been applied, Was it flat and laid down around the curve of the spine? In fact plaques will be no different than palettes in this regard. |
| I have included here in Comparative Diagram 4, some of the more obvious ways that you can identify a spine panel plaque. This 1739 panel is not a plaque, but will help to show you what to look for. In the first virtual spine panel we see how a normal pair of mirrored ornaments are placed in the corners, they are rotated 180 degrees and placed in opposing corners. Thus 'a' is found in the NW corner, then rotated and placed in the SE corner. This seems rather obvious HOWEVER when you see that the ornament in one of these corners is not exactly the same as its counterpart in the opposite corner, you know that you are looking at a plaque. Similarly with the ornament that is placed inbetween these mirrored pairs (shown as 'c' in panel 2) this item should be the same/identical on both sides even though often rotated. Possibly even more obvious and telling are the satellite dots and rings or stars that are placed around the centerpiece fleuron, these are shown in panel 3. These items are usually placed in rather approximate positions, and so they are not likely to be exactly in the same position in each panel, when you see them all aligned in precisely the same way in each panel you know that you are looking at plaque decoration. In panel 4, we see the signature/centerpiece fleuron, this too is often not positioned in exactly the same spot in the panels, thus a slightly misplaced fleuron is a sign of a normal decoration and not a plaque. |
| In Comparative Diagram 6, we see that the plaque is on a bit of an angle, not really horizontal, thus the corner ornaments are not actually in the corners, otherwise this plaque decoration would fool anyone, it has not been made perfectly symmetrical, the satellite dots and stars look to be approximately placed as they would be in a normal panel decorated with small tools. and this makes it harder for anyone to judge whether or not this might be a plaque decorated spine. |
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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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