| On the previous page we were looking at Derome le jeune bindings found in the Bibliotheque Nationale binder pages, they listed 6 example bindings which they attribute to him. |
| Two of these upon closer examination turned out to be decorated by Jean-pierre Jubert (the 3rd and 5th bindings). The gold tooled imprints on the boards do not derive from the tools of Derome but are in fact from the tools of Jubert, thus these two bindings should not be displayed as being representative of the work of Derome. This made me want to inspect more closely the other remaining four examples and I started with the first on the list. |
| When you read the fine print on this page you discover that the only reason it is in the list of Derome bindings is because it kind of looks like something he might have done, noting certain similarities, officially though they have described it as being from a non identified workshop. Why on earth include this binding in Derome's list if it isn't by Derome? One suspects they do not have too many Derome bindings to show us. On this binding I could see immediately a large imprint that I recognized as being similar to a Derome tool that I have documented on another page. So just to be sure I proceeded to download high resolution copies of this with Gallica as described in the previous pages. I then compared these with my Derome example from the British Library and I could see immediately that this was not a Derome imprint although it looks very similar. |
| Thinking it might be another binding by Jubert I tested an imprint that looked similar to one in Jubert's collection, it turned out to be similar but not identical, this was not therefore a binding decorated by him. There was another possibility and a much more likely one given the complexity and tool proliferation seen on the the BnF RLR, B-183 binding, and that was a binder who was first mentioned by one of the greatest French bookbinding experts that ever lived, Marius Michel. I have documented the story on this page and I went much much further as you will see if you study the pages listed here. I have catalogued the tools of this binder and show examples of his work. Sure enough when I tested the imprints they turned out to be those of this binder who I have dubbed the MM binder. |
| The good thing about finding this binding is that it provides us with yet more clues to discovering the identity of this amazing binder who followed in the tradition of Dubuisson and surpassed the level of Derome le jeune. Below I show my old collection of the MM binder imprints, without these new additions |
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On the next page we look at the second Derome le jeune binding on the BN list. click here to see the next page click here to return to the INDEX of new pages. see below a list of 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. |
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