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The binding shown above is found in the Royal Library in Madrid, it is covering a 1785 Almanach Royal. It seems that the French Royalty offered every year a copy of the Almanach to the King of Spain. For many years these Almanachs were decorated by Pierre-Paul Dubuisson, and now that they are stored and fully documented in the Royal Library they are great reference to Dubuisson's work and its chronological evolution. It is rare that one finds such bibliographic dedication as that in the Royal Library they have not only catalogued the books but also every important piece of decoration. Now our Delorme research reveals that he at some point took over the job of decorating these Almanach bindings. By following the trail of his tools we now discover some interesting changes in his choice of tools and decoration. This 1785 binding with a dentelle made with small tools is much like his work of the past. |
| I just remembered that Giles Barber might have catalogued a tool like this and sure enough I found it, Poor Barber never realized that Delorme worked for Derome le Jeune. Readers take note, this is not a common Derome tool, these are Delorme's tools that he used right up into the 90's as I am going to show. I have found convincing proof of these facts that we are going to delve into once we have a good grip on Delorme's tools. In as much as Barber has indicated where he saw these imprints we have yet more Delorme leads to follow up. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, we see that Barber found a very similar but not the same imprint. This Amanach Royal example is critical to our journey of discovering the bindings of Delorme from the period of 1785 to at least 1792. We need a name for this imprint perhaps del-43? |
| Before we move on to the next page I present in Comparative Diagram 3 examples of one of Delorme's favorite inside corner tools that he used from at least 1764 up until 1785 and probably beyond although it is starting to look worn and lacking its original fine detail we can still recognize its iconic shape. |
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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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