| The binding shown above is found in a Édouard Rahir catalogue: Livres dans les riches reliures des seizième, dix-septième et dix-huitième siècles. Paris, Librairie Damascène Morgand, 1910. I have shown you this important Delorme binding before however we have not studied all of the imprints. I want to look particularly at the corner tool del-12. Dubuisson often used this same type of tool in the corners. It could be considered a sort of signature tool, and it is in a way surprising that Delorme did not continue to use the original Dubuisson tool for this purpose. One of the reasons that I may not have catalogued this Delorme version before now is that he has often overlayed the crown of the palmette with another imprint, thus we do not know exactly what it looks like. |
| If you study the enlarged version of Comparative Diagram 1, you will see that a very small amount of the crown of del-12 is visible, I have attempted to reconstruct the crown so as to be able to make Comparative Diagrams. |
| The reconstruction of the crown of del-12 is a rough approximation, the size and shape is quite close however the details are not very accurate, due to being based on some low resolution examples. I wanted to have a more or less complete example so that we can proceed to Comparative Diagram 3. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we get to the meat of this subject, if you can identify these corner tools you have covered five of the most important dentelle artists of the second half of the 18th century. No small achievement because none of the experts, past or present have mastered this, including Barber and Foot. |
| A search through Barber's tool catalogue (2013) turns up only three of this important type, he catiously mentions Derome le jeune in connection with two of them, in fact only DCR 6 was used by Derome and DCR 8 belongs to Jubert who decorated bindings for Derome with his own tools and later Derome added his ticket (or it was perhaps added by a unscrupulous bookseller). Gosselin also decorated bindings for Derome, a fact that Barber never recognized and therefore mixed the tools of these artists. |
| In Comparative Diagram 4, we see Jubert has copied the work of Delorme, we can start with the outer roulette, Delorme used this roulette a lot in the 70's, it appears on all of his 2 plaque Almanach Royal bindings, however this is a Dubuisson tool, that I have a copy of from a 1754 Almanach Royal. Jubert who was not an officially recognized binder until 1771 was therefore using a copy of this tool, and the same can be said of the corner tool and bird tool, these are a copies of Dubuisson tools. Derome did not have a large bird of this kind thus Jubert can only have gotten this idea from Dubuisson or Delorme who also used this same Dubuisson tool. We can point out other tools that were being used by Delorme in the 60's and copies of which turn up in the work of Jubert in the 70's. Gosselin too copied Dubuisson tools, methods and dentelle designs bringing them to perfection in his bindings for Louis XVI in 1784. |
|
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 |