| The binding shown above is found in La Bibliotheque de feu Edouard Rahir Ancien Libraire Sixieme et Derniere Partie. Édouard Rahir (1862-1924) was a well- known antiquarian bookseller, bibliographer, and publisher in Paris... Some items from his library were sold shortly after his death, but the majority were sold between 1930 and 1938. After all these Delorme research pages we know that this is another of his creations, what we don't know is when he actually executed this work. I want to point out here as on the previous page the importance of corner tools, the best and quickest way to identify your 18th century dentelle. Here again in this example Delorme has hidden the upper part of the corner imprint. |
| We know that the catalogue reproduction is likely to be slightly out of scale and I tested this first with a del-6-2 imprint that I have scanned at 1200dpi, this showed that the Rahir reproduction was about 2 percent over scale, then I started to work on these del-2 corner imprints. In Comparative Diagram 1, we see that the top part of the imprint has been hidden/ overlayed with del-64. However thats not what was disturbing me, it was the anomaly shown by the green arrow 'A' this did not seem to match my scanned example, I found another example from this Rahir and it was much more like my scan... how do you explain such differences? This is one of the reasons why researchers lay awake at night. Notice also the differences in the tail of this imprint, my second choice of imprint shown at 'C' is a closer match to the scan 'D' and makes you wonder what is happening at 'E', and we still not have answered the question of what this imprint looks like fully exposed. |
| Fortunately I found some Delorme examples where we can see the full del-2 imprint, albeit at lower resolutions. If you enlarge Comparative Diagram 2 you will see that there are some dots at the center top of the del-2. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we see that there may be more than I originally imagined, although I have perhaps added one too many in my reconstruction in Comparative Diagram 4. |
| The importance of having this reconstruction in Comparative Diagram 4, is that we can now compare it with the other important specimens of this Type. This was a favorite corner tool of many important binders. |
| I have tackled Barber's collection of these imprints that he first imagined as 'christmas trees' that image so obsessed him that he insisted in displaying these imprints in an inverted fashion. In Comparative Diagram 5, I have returned these imprints to their normal corner orientation. When you read Barber's description you have to imagine that they are trees upside down. Now strangely enough the only one that he mentions in connection with Derome is actually Gosselin's tool of this type and it is recognizable by the the x shaped form near the top. Delorme employed in some cases Dubuission's tool of this type pd-2 (click here to see an example) however Delorme's pd-2 has some additional cuts in the collar, that make it easy to distinguish from the original. I have not shown a Jubert example because in all of the examples that I have found, he appears to be using Derome's dj-2, and if not what he is using is so similar that you cannot tell the difference. This is quite an important detail as it may be a way to determine which bindings Jubert made for Derome and those that he made for his own business. Barber's DCT 35, I have identified as the Relieur Royal (click here to see this binder). I have covered the work of this binder thoroughly, many of his bindings and tools have been identified and yet we still do not know his name... Pierre-Antoine LaFerte maybe. |
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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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