| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see some examples of the imprint found in the corners of the large dentelle on the boards of the 1698 Berviarium. I have managed to find two other examples, the black and white reproduction is from a 1728 Office, suggesting that Boyet was using this tool up to the later part of his career, the other example is from a random search of the internet, truly just a chance finding, it was reproduced in a Bibliophile blog, in 2013 where it was a eBay news item, and thus so far I do not have any details about this very low resolution picture, however enlarging even this minimum image clearly shows that this is another Boyet imprint of this type. |
| I was looking for something that would give me a better fix on the production date for the 1698 Breviarium. A search for examples of Boyet bindings with this winged cherub head soon revealed that he did not use this tool very often, and when I finally found it on the 1728 office, this gave me second thoughts about when the 1698 Breviarium might have been made. Now this third eBay example AUX ARMES DE FRANÇOISE-MARIE DE BOURBON (1677-1749) appears to be another dentelle closer in style to our 1698 Breviarium. |
| "Françoise Marie de Bourbon, légitimée de France (4 May[2] 1677 1 February 1749) was the youngest illegitimate daughter of Louis XIV of France and his maîtresse-en-titre, Françoise-Athénaïs, Marquise de Montespan. At the age of 14, she was wed to her first cousin Philippe d'Orléans, future Regent of France during the minority of Louis XV. Not long after their marriage, Philippe openly ridiculed his wife's bad temper, nicknaming her Madame Lucifer. Her mother-in-law said that during the early years of the Chartres marriage, Françoise was as "drunk as drunk" three to four times a week." |
| I have included this history of Françoise Marie de Bourbon trying to establish when she might have received this book, she was married in 1692. In theory the arms that we see on this binding could date from anytime after 1692. This example of the armes of Françoise Marie de Bourbon with the large upswept palm leaves is unusual (surmontant deux palmes nouées frappées au centre des plats) Below I show a 1708 example from Bukowskis Auctions. This maybe another Boyet dentelle and shares characteristics with yet another Boyet. |
| Look closely at the dentelle shown above it is almost certainly the same dentelle that we can barely see with the armes of Françoise Marie de Bourbon in Comparative Diagram 2, this dentelle is composed of some of the same elements as we see in the 1708 Bukowski example. We do not know when this binding was made (click here for more details) but we see inside some brocade paper that may be similar to our 1698 Breviarium example, the same production technique, motifs in gold, but a different design. |
| You have to look very closely at this winged cherub head imprint to even see the head, it is only barely visible magnified. However as you can see by the example at the top of this page the cherub can appear rather demonic after 3 centuries of errosion. I decided to try and reconstruct what the original head may have looked like in Comparative Diagram 3, after I did this reconstruction, that I was then calling a flying cherub head, I decided to search the internet for such a thing and discovered the most complete web site on the subject that you are ever likely to encounter, Bob Speel's second website (click here to see it). I chose one of his examples that I think gives an impression of what the Boyet exmple might be trying to emulate. However you have to bear in mind that the head itself is not really visible to the naked eye, being only about 2 mm in size. |
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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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