| The image and text shown above comes from LIBRARIE SOURGET catalogue number XVI, 1997, page 238, Lot 101. We see here the arms of Marie-Thérèse de Savoie (1756-1805) comtesse d'Artois and suspect strongly that this binding may have been executed by François Gaudreau. We can check this possibility by comparing some of the imprints with other bindings that we know have been made by Gaudreau. On the second page of this research I show a set of Plutarque from the musée Médard, these are shown at high resolution and the imprints are identical with those of signed bindings by Gaudreau as well as the fact that they are also decorated with the arms of the comtesse d'Artois. These bindings will therefor be very useful here in our comparative research. First however I wanted to see if the arms were identical. |
| In this research you must be very sure that everything is of the same scale, most catalogues give the size of the binding and you have to rescale the images to get them correctly scaled, however you never know if the measurements given are really accurate. Using an example from the British Library Database of Bookbindings where a scale is provided with the image, we can verify all our work. Also I wanted to test these arms with an overlay procedure to see if they are actually identical imprints. |
| I have included above yet another binding that bears the arms of the comtesse d"Artois, it is also from the catalogues of LIBRARIE SOURGET. being found in catalogue number XIX, 1999, page 352, Lot 140. In Comparative Diagram 6 we compare the spine details from the Esope binding with that of this Bruyere. We see an identical centrepiece fleuron in the lowest spine compartment with identical satellite dots with crosses, identical border tools as well as an identical treatment of the raised bands. However here we see a new palette arrangement and double filets to frame the compartment, this simpler arrangement gives a cleaner less complicated look. The small dog tooth roulette and rodeo palette have been abandoned? It will be interesting to know whether the Bruyere binding is earlier or later than the Esope binding. |
| I was just finishing this page, when, by an enormous coincidence, I received an email from someone who has discovered these Gaudreau pages and alerted me to two sets of bindings by Gaudreau that are currently for sale on Abebooks, these bindings appear to be more or less identical to the Bruyere binding shown here. I show them below, the price is 4.800 euros for each set! and if you are thinking thats too expensive you better look at this. |
| Now we can see that there is a strong probability that these bindings were all executed by François Gaudreau, the centrepiece (signature) fleuron in the spine panels is very important because we can see this same fleuron in our next example, Reliure aux armes de Marie-Joséphine de Savoie, comtesse de Provence, elder sister of Marie-Thérèse de Savoie. |
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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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