| The reproductions shown above are of a better quality than you can usually find, I have discovered again today that this work we are doing of comparing inprints, requires using high resolution images. I will tell you why, up until now I had assumed some of Delormes imprints were simply Delorme using Dubuisson tools. The problem that I am discovering now is that Delorme was using look alike tools that were so well made you could not tell the difference between them. The differences that you might expect to see, that might be caused by excessive gold in the imprint or old and worn tools are sometimes larger than differences in the actual tools. However with these better quality reproductions I was able to raise the enlargements to that of a 1200 dpi scan, and here we discover Delorme employing tools that only look like Dubuisson tools. |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we compare pd-36b imprints from the Rahir 217 binding, a certain Dubuisson binding from 1757, with the imprints from binding 56 with an overlay. You can clearly see that the shoulders of the Dubuisson imprints (designated with green arrows) differ in shape and are broader. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I have taken this high resolution examination a lot further to include early Dubuisson imprints from Davis487, here we open a giant can of worms as it appears as though the Dubuisson pd-36b imprint from 1747 is not the same as the Dubuisson imprint from 1757. It is the 1757 model that has the broader shoulders and now I have catalogued it as pd-36b-2. To further complicate matters it appears as though Delorme had 2 different models of this tool. The first that we see in binding 56, I have catalogued as del-36b and the second that we saw on the previous page becomes del-36b-2. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, things are no less complex, I have found that the early Dubuisson imprints from this pair of tools do not match the 1757 examples thus the 1757 examples will become pd-36a-2. These compared with the No. 56 examples show a again significant shoulder differences as shown with the overlay, however the Delorme examples from my 1764 Breviarium seem to be only slightly different from the original pd-36a, I have decided to catalogue them provisionally as del-36a. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, one can see the problems confronting the researcher of gold tooled imprints that are hundreds of years old. By some sort of magic, things appear that are not usually there, while things that should be there have mysteriously disappeared. All this without forgetting that these imprints could easily fit on the nail of a person's thumb. |
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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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