| The binding shown above can be found online in the Bibliotheque nationale de France (see the link above) In their information about this binding they state: Binding in orange morocco with mosaic floral decoration and dotted gold background, Paris, unidentified workshop, around 1760. (Reliure en maroquin orange à décor floral mosaïqué et fond pointillé d'or, Paris, atelier non identifié, vers 1760.) |
| Given all the experts working in the BnF, expertise of the highest level as concerns French decorative bookbinding , they still cannot identify the workshop that produced this binding. If you, the reader cannot identify this workshop after studying the last dozen or so pages, I will be very surprised. Here are many of the same imprints that we looked at on the last page. Including pd-80 that I perhaps overlooked previously. On this page I include again the 1758 imprint collection, the palettes do not apply, however a majority of the other tools have been used on this BnF binding. |
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Now we need to consider something beyond our knowledge, something that only a person who actually has gold tooling experience would know. On the previous page we were looking at the very small 9 petaled imprint pd-29-3. We can see it here, or I think we can, however it is so charged with gold that the details have been, for the most part obscured. Does this indicate that this was a different hand applying the imprint? or a thicker sheet of gold, or different leather texture? We might also question the date of this binding, proposed by the BnF as c.1760. Now look closely at this black and white reproduction that comes from Marius Michel's 1880, publication; La reliure française depuis l'invention de l'imprimerie jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle. You can find this online at archive.org (click here to see it) what I just discovered is that if you use their zoom to magnify the page, and then download the magnified page you get a high resolution image. Marius Michel used the most modern reproduction and printing methods of his time that were in fact superior to what we see today in modern times. The method was called heliogravure, you can see the names of E. Charreyre A. Salmon in small print under the reproductions (read about heliogravure here) |
| You will notice in the enlarged detail above many Dubuisson imprints including sharply detailed examples of the tiny 9 petaled imprint pd-29-3 that we have been studying on the previous page. Michon has a reproduction of this binding in his book on PL XXVII with "46 Derome" inscribed underneath it, I assume then, that this is his idea of a Derome, however we know, from our efforts to catalogue in the past few pages, a wide array of Dubuisson mosaic imprints, that the imprints seen on this binding derive from Dubuisson's workshop, particular is pd-21, this is the earlier model and might indicate that this binding was made before 1757. (see this page for another similar comparative binding) |
| I have chosen the Dubuisson imprint pd-29-3 for this comparative exercise, we could have chosen any one of a number of tools to show that Marius Michel's PLANCHE XVIII is yet another mosaic from the Dubuisson workshop. |
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click here to return to the Dubuisson mosaic INDEX. click here to see more Pierre-Paul Dubuisson 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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