| Here is another all over design binding by Boyet, this excellent reproduction is from the Gumuchian catalogue No. 12 CATALOGUE DE RELIURES DU XVE AU XIXE SIÈCLE, EN VENTE A LA LIBRAIRIE GUMUCHIAN & CIE. Paris: Gumuchian & Cie, n.d. (circa 1930s), buy this catalogue if you dont have it. According to the small catalogue of Boyet bindings by Isabelle de Conihout et P. Ract-Madoux, Reliures françaises du XVIIe siècle, chefs-d'oeuvre du Musée Condé2002, the "scarecrow " motif that we have been pointing out in the last few pages, can be seen in bindings which they date very precisely at 1707 to 1710. here we see the same tool in 1732. I suspect that Boyet was using this tool earlier than 1707 and that it was used on Boyet bindings for at least 30 years, while the roulette that I have called the 3 block roulette and is roulette "R" in the list of Boyet roulettes, this roulette he may have been using from the very beginning in 1684. I show the imprints of these tools below in Comparative Diagram 1. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, the imprints are presented a slightly less than 300 dpi to fit them on the page however the enlargement is 600dpi. It is never easy to extract imprints, editing errors can occure such as the small dot on the lowest curve of lab-corner-1a, I don't think that dot should be there, it is not part of the tool? ahh I see it is part of the Mars Attack palette, this will give you some idea of the problems. Probably the biggest problem is finding an imprint that is clear and well struck, not overlayed with neighboring imprints, sometimes it is impossible to find an ideal imprint and then you are forced to either present a shabby imprint OR, a reconstructed one. This is cheating in a way but it will only bother researchers who are trying to confirm things at more than 1200 dpi level. Thus lab-29-3 and lab-29-4 are actually reconstructed imprints. I show below a reconstruction of lab-33 as well as other examples of it to give some idea of the difficulty of trying to isolate and or recreate an imprint. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I have collected some of the Boyet all over design bindings, these were made near the end of his career and even after his death as his workshop continued in this work for many years. |
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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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