| The amazing reproduction shown above is found in Volume 1 of La bibliothèque de feu Édouard Rahir, ancien libraire Paris : Francisque Lefrançois, libraire-expert, 1930. This is an exceptional binding that was almost certainly executed in 1763 due to the fact that Madame de Pompadour died on the 15 of April 1764. While Pierre-Paul Dubuisson died in 1762, and therefore could not have made this binding even though we see that it has been decorated with a number of important Dubuisson tools. I show below a classic Dubuisson binding that is found in the depths of the Bibliotheque nationale de France. I found it completely by accident while searching for examples of L'éloge de la Folie and it turns out that Gallica has online a complete digitized copy of it and it is in this magnificent Dubuisson binding. Now when you search the Bibliotheque nationale de France for Dubuisson bindings, they only show you two, neither of which are bindings with elaborate hand tooled dentelles such as the one below. So I can only surmise that the BnF does not know that the binding shown below is by Dubuisson, anyway I am willing to take bets with anyone who cares too that it is. This is pure classic Dubuisson and probably it was made not long after the publication date of 1751. (click here to see it) |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see absolute proof that this Dubuisson tool was put into use on the 1763 Bellin binding, what remains to be proved is that it was Pierre Delorme who was using Dubuisson's tools, what we can also show is that who ever made this binding was a highly skilled expert. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, I show the plaque that has been employed 6 times in the decoration of binding 27. In the lower panel I have removed all imprints that are not part of this plaque. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, I show in the upper panel the top center plaque over laying the bottom center, the top layer has been reduced to a 50% transparency, inverted from with to black and set to difference, the result is that anything that does not match in alignment in the two layers shows up as a dark shadow. In the lower panel I have used plaques from the sides, the arrangement of additional imprints differs from that of the upper panel. What does it all mean, you are asking. Firstly in the upper panel we see that the closest additional imprints that sit on top of the plaque are almost perfectly aligned with a slight amount of shadow, these are all separately placed imprints, sitting almost exactly on the same part of each plaque and aligned precisely as their counter parts at the opposite end of the binding. This is pure magic, I have no idea how it is done or if there is some trick to it, other than just knowing intuitively where to place these imprints. What ever way this may be explained it still emplies a highly skilled worker... and never forget that if you make a mistake it cannot be erased. |
| Just over two years ago I made an extensive survey of Dubuisson mosaic bindings (click here to see it ). In this survey I tried to examine the mosaics on a chronological basis and recorded the imprints for each Almanach Royal by year. While doing this for a 1758 Almanach (click here to see it) I noticed a new pair of imprints that I had not yet recorded or noticed in the past, these same imprints appear to be present in binding 27 and are shown in Comparative Diagram 4. These are relatively small imprints and identifying them with certainty is not so easy however you will notice that they are not a perfectly mirrored pair, the characteristics of each slightly different, the stem of pd-40b-4 is thicker than that of pd-40a-4. This difference, that is also visible in the binding 27 pair, leads me to conclude that these imprints do indeed derive from the same Dubuisson tools. It is the arrival of these new tools in Dubuisson's kit that also leads me to wonder if it was not at this time that Delorme began working for Dubuisson. |
| Now we come to a fascinating part of this adventure. On a previous page (click here to see it) I was in a quandry about the differences in the Etat version of Dubuisson imprint pair pd-36, this was due to the fact that the Etat model did not match the Dubuisson pair, it turns out that I found a pair that did match and they are on the binding shown below, which curiously has a lot in common wiith binding 27, specifically the use of large plaques. |
| Comparative Diagram 6 is a reaffirmation of the connection between this Dubuisson pair pd-36 and Pierre Delorme (Etat binder) where pd-36a remains the same in all cases yet pd-36b has been replaced by a similar but not exactly the same tool. The question is why are there two forms of pd-36b, was one lost and replaced... if so when did this happen? The new pd-36b appears on this 1761 binding 248, where as the old pd-36b appears on the 1763 binding 27. Confusing right? There are a few possible explanations, one is that binding 248 is actually older and was perhaps produced after 1763. In Comparative Diagram 7 we can see, just barely, that the spine palettes are the same on both bindings... I have detailed this important palette on another page (click here to see it). |
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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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