| The reproduction shown above is from the 1955 auction catalogue LIVRES ILLUSTRÉS DU XVIIIE SIÈCLEParis, France: Librairie Giraud-Badin. On page 7 of this series of pages I reproduded a small text from Giles Barber who stated that Douceur had special tool (the jestor's head) made for the 1751 Erasmus Eloge de la Folie, so we might be forgiven in suspecting that the Eloge de la Folie binding shown above with a Jestor's head might actually be Douceur's binding. |
| The first thing I wanted to try is comparing the d-43a3 imprint that we looked at on the previous page with what appeared to be a similar imprint on this 1751 Erasmus binding. In Comparative Diagram 1, we find a surprising result, it appears as though this example and the 114 imitation example might actually be the same imprint. Is this another imitation? Another test was quickly devised as we could see another set of imprints that looked like the d-17pair. First however I wanted to be sure that the 42 reproduction was the right size. I needed to find some other examples of this 1751 publication where exact dimensions are given, searching with Google for Erasme l'eloge de la folie 1751 I stumbled upon an amazing discovery in the Bibliotheque nationale de France digital reproductions, Gallica. (click here to see it) a digitized complete copy of this work with all the plates that is in an Dubuisson dentelle binding! The BnF that cannot be bothered to show you this binding as a Dubuisson example! If you search for Pierre-Paul Dubuission bindings in the BnF they only show you one binding and that is a plaque binding. Of all the amazing bindings that Dubuisson made they show only one plaque, does this smack of a conspiracy to you too? Anyway we will look at this Dubuisson binding on another page. Further to this the BnF does not give you any dimensions for this binding, you have to out smart them to find out, first you download the complete image of the binding, it arrives as a low resolution image that is obviously not at any kind of convenient scale, then you download a high resolution detail from the binding that is at a 400dpi resolution, then you resize the binding to match the 400dpi detail, thus you get a measurement of about 24 cm high, this corresponds with another source which is Sotheby's where a copy of this was up for auction in 2014 (click here to see this) and they give the dimensions as (243 x 176 mm). |
| Thus we come to Comparative Diagram 2, where we see that these imprints are not the same, this is not likely to be a Douceur, but lets test something else, below I show an enlarged detail which is anyway very impressive. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3 we recognize a wreath with crossed C-scrolls as described by Barber, he has catalogued a number of these imprints and sure enough we find that he has catalogued this one . |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, we see that these imprints are very close with only a slight difference in size, could this be a binding by R.F. Fetil? Lets look at some of his tools (click here to see them) |
| In Comparative Diagram 5, we discover to our disappointment that these imprints only look the same at a distance, if this is not a Fetil probably the rest are not either. |
| In Comparative Diagram 6, we are finally getting somewhere, these imprints are a match and they can be traced to Barber's W.Cat 235. and 422. Below we see Barber's references to these bindings and the tools that he catalogued from them, these are not Douceur tools nor Douceur bindings but we have now a strong reference. |
| Finally we see that we have already discovered who made these imitation bindings, he goes by the name of Plumet... |
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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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