| The binding shown above is found in Sotheby's 2007 auction The Library of Marcel De Merre (click here to see it). The first thing that caught my eye in the decoration of this binding a la Vieuville was the palette at the bottom of the spine, I recognized it from a binding that we have looked at on a previous page. |
| Really I found this 1739 binding by accident while searching for Boyet's Vieuville dentelles to enlarge my work on another page (click here to see it). This was an exhaustive search and this 1739 binding a rare late find. I had been searching previously for another palette like this one as I know I had seen another somewhere, this was not it, but a lucky find for sure. As I prepared the palettes for Comparative Diagram 1, I could not believe my eyes, suddenly I noticed the alien pods, this is the first time I had caught a glimpse of them since we started these pages on the 1698 Breviarium. After reviewing and studying more that 100 Boyet bindings without finding any trace of these pods I had almost forgotten this problem, that I outlined on page 21. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we discover a possible solution to the alien pods mystery. In as much as these pods have resurfaced on a 1739 binding it would seem almost certain that the 1698 Breviarium was made in the post Boyet period, probably in the Boyet workshops as they continued to produce bindings with the old Boyet tools. The decorative bronze varnish paper of the Breviarium may finally pinpoint the date of production. Here at last was my epilogue to these pages. This 1698 Breviarium was not made and decorated in 1698 by Luc-Antoine Boyet but rather by his successors a few decades later. |
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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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