| The binding shown above is from Seymour De Ricci's 1935 book French Signed Bindings in Mortimer L Schiff Collection. I have included his text on this binding that he attributes to Derome due to a supposed Derome le jeune ticket inside and some tools that he boldly but mistakenly tells us belong to Derome le jeune, apparently De Ricci thought that every bird tool belonged to Derome. |
| In comparative Diagram 1, I show 6 examples of Dubuisson's bird tool, three from the spine of this De Ricci example 40, three that I scanned myself from a Dubuisson binding. Dubuisson was using this tool from at least 1749, 12 years before Derome le jeune even had his papers as a binder (see this page for proof) |
| In comparative Diagram 2, I show De Ricci's reproduction of the inside doublure with the supposed Derome le jeune etiquette. Next to it I have placed the copy of this etiquette that De Ricci has reproduced in his text, will the real etiquette please stand up. |
| When I started scanning the De Ricci, Derome le jeune tickets, I had no idea just how many there were, there are many more than I present here. De Ricci hit the jackpot when he started collecting Derome tickets, for most other binders he might find a couple but for Derome he lists nearly 50, and the ticket we see here is the most popular, being found on such non descript bindings that you couldn't sell them otherwise. These uninteresting bindings must be from the later part of Derome's career when he turned the work over to anyone handy. Of all these tickets only the bindings of numbers 39, 45, and 50 appear to have actually been decorated by Derome, number 51 was decorated by Jubert. Gruel published an example of Derome's ticket in 1887 flinging open the door to forgeries although I am sure they existed long before. The last four examples seem to be quite uniform and given that number 50 is a real Derome these others might also be. The termination of the 'par' and 'jeune' are an interesting way of classifying these tickets. In the last 4 examples we see that DEROME is not in capitals. As for number 40 which is where we started, the oversized 'O' in 'Derome' smacks of greed and forgery. |
| When I was just starting to investigate bookbindings I created a page (May 2007) about the Collombat plaques (click here to see this page) at the time I knew very little about plaques, however I thought that somehow the Dubuisson's might have had something to do with these plaques, now we have certain proof, with Dubuisson using the very same roulette here as an inner dentelle. In the Collombat bindings the roulette was used as a filler to take up the space around the plaque which was originally designed for a smaller binding. |
| We see in Comparative Diagram 5, just how closely Derome copied Dubuisson's tools, this has led to endless problems of people mistaking Dubuisson's work for that of Derome. In the following Comparative Diagrams 6-9 you will see that it is no easy matter to discern between the tools of Dubussion and the copies of Derome, especially with the naked eye and differences in the quality of the tooling. However the differences in the bird tool or fer de l'oiseau are more obvious. (Note: we do not actually know who copied who.) |
| In Comparative Diagram 9, I have assembled the major bird tools that one is likely to encounter in the second half of the 18th century, I have included two sets of the Dubuisson imprints so that all the details are more easily recognized. Derome has only two that we see commonly, these are looking in the opposite direction compared to similar examples in Dubuisson's collection so really it is not hard to tell the difference. Jubert's birds can be easily distinguished by their bases jj-4-2 might actually be Derome's tool that Jubert used occasionaly (needs more research). Jubert used jj-4 more often than not and because of the base it is easy to recognize, also his large bird can be recognized by it's feathers which always seem to stand out. Dubuisson rarely used his large bird, and I can see now that pd-4-2 was used in 1749 while pd-4 is seen in 1757 suggesting that this was possibly a later tool that replaced the original. |
| Finally we come to Dubuisson's rodeo palette, probably one that he used most often, if you don't recognize this palette you cannot consider yourself as an expert in the field of 18th century decorative bookbindings, signed or unsigned. |
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click here to return to the INDEX of the Etiquette pages. click here to see the INDEX of the 2017 pages. click here to return to the HOME page. 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. |
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