| The reproduction shown above is from The James A. de Rothschild Bequest at Waddesdon Manor. Printed Books and Bookbindings. by Giles Barber. Aylesbury: The Rothschild Foundation. 2013. 2 vols. ( 1161 + 60 pp.) 96 colour plates + 880 black and white illustrations. Barber has ascribed this binding to Louis Douceur, however most of the tools to decorate this binding are those of Plumet. On the past few pages we have been examining bindings that have a close affinity with a signed Plumet binding, we are following the trail of Plumet tools to discover more of his bindings. It was not until that I studied closely this W.Cat. 422 binding that I finally made some headway with this conundrum of Plumet and Douceur tools mixed in the same binding. First let us look at Barber's work on this binding, he has extracted most of the tools and catalogued them. |
| The quality Barber's published photo of this binding is better than most, and I have attempted to extract the imprints to compare them with Barber's list. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, we see that Barber has not listed all of the imprints, and he has failed to notice an important detail in his FR 65. This is not two separate tools this is one tool that only appears to be a pair of fleurons linked with a dot accompanied by two satellite dots and a small ring with a dot in the center. We have looked at a nearly identical tool in the collection of Louis Chenu (click here to see lc-13) |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we discover that this motif was popular with a number of binders and may have been in Douceur bindings in the 1750's, I once thought it was a post Douceur tool being employed by Jubert, but not Derome? |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we see some important post Douceur tools, these tools probably not popular before Douceur retired, Derome le Jeune never used a tool like this nor did Dubuisson, these tools were brought into play by Jubert, Gosselin, Delorme et al. in the 70's... |
|
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. |
| Virtual Bookings, created by L. A. Miller | return to the Home page of VIRTUAL BOOKBINDINGS |