| When I started looking for Fétil bindings I tried every trick in the book to find them with Google, including a search of Marmontel as the Fétil bindings in the British Library were found on Marmontel publications, this is how I found the above example which is found in a Sotheby's 2014 auction catalogue (click here to see it). We can see immediately that the decoration is very similar to the binding that we examined on the previous page. However when i first saw these bindings I wondered about the outer roulette frame it was unlike any previous examples. Then while searching Barber's tool catalogue I stumbled upon this very roulette which Barber notes as being from a signed Fétil binding W.Cat. 502. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1 we see that Barber's ROLL 3 is an approximate fit, this roulette has to be one of the most irregular that you are ever likely to encounter, every element is a different size! Fortunately we know by now that this 1765 Marmontel binding is a Fétil and this these extracted strips of the roulette are ROLL 3. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I show three Fétil imprints that we have not encountered previously, these will take on a greater significance as we proceed, and allow us to further pinpoint important Fétil bindings. Here is some great news, a wonderful friend has just now sent me a copy of Barber's W.Cat. 502 Fétil signed binding, I suspect that Barber never fully realized the importance of this Fetil binding as it opens up a pandora's box of hitherto unidentified bindings, we will look at this on the next page. |
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click here to return to the HOME page. click here to see an INDEX of the 2017 pages. see below links to previous work |
| 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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