| The binding shown above with it's doublure can be found online at the Bibliotheque nationale de france (click here to see it). There is perhaps no other French18th century mosaic more important than this example. I am just now realizing this fact even though I have detailed this binding on a previous page.. We are going to show here that this is a binding by Pierre Delorme, just looking at the cover and spine there is very very little that can be identified as being made by any known binder, no obvious identifiable imprints, however the doublure is an absolute wealth of information |
| In Comparative Diagram 1, we see that the imprints on this doublure derive from unmistakable Pierre-Paul Dubuisson tools, these are absolutely not the tools of Derome le jeune as proposed by the staff at the Bibliotheque national de France, Honestly one would be hard pressed to make such an attribution considering the total absence of a single Derome le Jeune imprint. These imprints derive from the tools of Dubuisson however Dubuisson died in 1762 therefore he could not have been the person who has decorated this binding. Yet this single binding stands as an example that can be linked to almost every other mosaic binding that Louis-Marie Michon attributed to either J.A. Derome or his son Derome le jeune. I have come not to understand why Michon has attributed all these bindings to the Deromes, because they all have the same characteristics and imprints, they were all obviously made by the same workshop, unfortunately for Michon these bindings did not come from the Derome workshop. The came from the workshop of Pierre-Paul Dubuisson, a workshop where Pierre Delorme may have been working for a number of years previous to death of Dubuisson, perhaps he was an apprentice, or perhaps he was already a skilled doreur that Dubuisson had hired. |
| In Comparative Diagram 2, we see that there are also imprints found on this doublure from tools that Dubuisson never used or even possessed, these are the tools of Delorme, that can be found in the 1772 Rahir 263 binding that we have looked at on the previous page. Fortunately there is a detail in these imprint pairs that makes identification a simple and certain matter. Notice that the imprints have been labeled with A and B, this is to point out the fact that the stamen of example A is considerably longer than that of B which has perhaps been damaged. This very significant difference is identical in both cases. |
| The images for the mosaic binding shown above are from photographs by Erick Aguirre who has done an amazing amout of research on mosaic bindings. This binding has a Derome le jeune ticket inside however all the tools inside and out are those of Jean Delorme, we can only guess that Derome hired Delorme to do the decoration, and in such a case Delorme must have been considered by Derome as someone equal to the task after which he signed his own name to it. |
| In Comparative Diagram 3 we see the same Delorme imprints with the corresponding A and B differences, while on the covers we see some of the same Dubuisson imprints as found on 1763 BnF, RLR, B-4873 (BIS), specifically pd-3 as well as the obvious Dubuisson roulette-palette that we have detailed previously. |
| In Comparative Diagram 6, we see part of a fascinating dentelle binding with the same corner tool as the Liber conformitatum doublure as well as other imprints that form links between the examples in Comparative Diagram 5, these examples are all related to each other, showing that they all derive from the same workshop, although perhaps at different periods. We can also point out the inner corner tools that have appeared in the mosaics of the previous pages. |
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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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