| The binding shown above is found in Sotheby's 2015 auction catalogue (click here to see it). We are going to look at all the gold tooled imprints on this important early Boyet binding. We do not know when this binding was actually made however we are going to compare this binding with some others to try establish a reasonable estimate. First I wanted to measure the roulette that have been used here. That is not going to be easy due to the fact that the binding was photographed at an angle. To measure the roulettes you will first have to eliminate the perspective distortion of the photograph. I imagine in this age of computer magic there are programs out there that will do this, and do it very accurately, however I do not have them so I will have to do it the hard way. |
| Of course it won't be perfect but you can get a good idea of the height of the roulette from the horizontal rows that will not have distorted significantly close to the spine and your length vertically will not change as there is little or no perspective involved. Working with the smaller outer roulette was a lot harder than the larger, after a long search I think I have found matching strips of this roulette which I have not catalogued previously. The larger roulette has been made so you can easily find a matching detail, and as such it is unique in this series of roulettes that we can call for the moment C-7 and C-8. |
| Measuring and testing these Boyet type C roulettes is actually long overdue work for me, and I wanted to see how they compare with the examples of Jeanne-Marie Métivier who has illustrated a number of examples in her paper entitled , ''La reliure à la Bibliothèque du roi de 1672 à 1786'', dans Mélanges autour de l'histoire des livres imprimés et périodiques, sous la direction Bruno Blasselle et Laurent Portes, Paris, 1998, p. 139, Figure 4.) In Comparative Diagram 3, we see that our C-7 does not match any of Metivier's models. |
| We know that our imprints taken from the image corrected board will be somewhat distorted. In Comparative Diagram 5, we see first as (A) the part of the of this louvre dentelle closest to the spine turned horizontaly, Row (C) is a horizontal row this will be distorted lengthwise. Row (D) is the aproximate corrected (C). Row (B) is the corrected (A) which will be fine lenthwise but too thick. These corrections are better shown in Comparative Diagram 5 where we see (C) has been inverted colorwise and reduced 50% transparency. This placed over (B) shows that it has been corrected to the right thickness (a and b) show the difference in this thickness correction. It is critical to have our sample the right size, so that we can compare it will other examples from Metivier or Barber. |
| In Comparative Diagram 7 we see out Boyet louvre 2 example compared with the only nearly close example of Metivier that is smaller and shows some differences particularly in the seriation of the main central leaf. None of Barber's examples appear to match this second Boyet example. Below in Comparative Diagram 8, I show Metivier's examples, and attempted to extract the shape of the actual tool, this is a lot easier to do when the imprints are not overlapped. |
| In Comparative Diagram 9, I have attempted to reconstruct the shape of Boyet louvre 2, as you can see from the examples it is very hard to find the actual shape with so much overlapping. The examples I show here are those with the least amount of overlap. In Comparative Diagram 10 we test the reconstructed imprint. on the top row (R1) we see what it would look like without overlap, (R2) is with overlap however this was a cut and paste that did not match well the actual bordure (B) and finally (R3) is a closer fit however we can see that the actual imprint looks better and one might even think that the original tool was designed to be used in an overlapped form as well as without overlapping. |
| In Comparative Diagram 12, I present proof that this binding was made by Boyet, probably sometime close to 1690 or earlier. We compare in this diagram a palette catalogued and illustrated by Isabelle de Conihout & Pascal Ract-Madoux as palette VI. On page 86 of their book Reliures françaises du XVIIe siècle, Paris, 2002, they present an example of a binding by Boyet (No. 36) that they estimate to have been executed sometime between 1690 and 1700. I show the spine and all important palette VI of this binding compared with our 1611 binding. In the next few pages we are going to examine more bindings that have things in common with this magnificent early binding by Luc-Antoine Boyet. |
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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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