| I was searching through the British Library Database of Bookbindings, for J A Derome, and came across this item shelfmarked 156a23, I noticed that they state in the information concerning this binding, that it has a J A Derome ticket inside. This seemed strange because they give a publication date of 1771, that's more than 10 years after J A Derome passed away. (22 November 1760) I sent a message right away to Philippa Marks who is in charge of everything, (Curator of Bookbindings, Early Printed Collections) asking her to check on this and she was kind enough to send me a scanned image of the ticket in question, as well as one of the spine of this binding as well as the title page which clearly shows that the date is correct. However we can see also on the spine that some new labels have been added to this binding, where we also see the date of 1771. |
| If there was ever a fake J A Derome ticket this might be it... right? I then searched the internet for J A Derome tickets, there are not many but a few that are probably the real thing. None however look anything like the 156a23 etiquette. Below in Comparative Diagram 1, I show these examples, the Sotheby's example is probably authentic, I mean an actual photo, (click here to see it.) On the next page we are going to look at the spine from that Sotheby's example. |
| So you are wondering what's mysterious about all this, well looking at the 156a23 spine I seemed to remember seeing this palette before, then, just rummaging around in my image file chaos I stumbled up what looked to be the same palette. This is from another Sotheby's auction (click here to see it.) I show this binding below, Sotheby's experts atribute it to Derome le jeune on the basis of the fer à l'oiseau that does look like Derome's bird however none of the other imprints on this binding appear to be those of Derome. The mystery then is whether 156a23 with a fake J A Derome ticket could possibly be connected to Derome le jeune. Not only that, who was the binder of the Dorat, and how did he get Derome's bird? |
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Dorat, Claude Joseph [OEUVRES. PARIS, 1767.] In-8 (179 x 113 mm). Maroquin vert, dentelle à l'oiseau, dos lisse orné du fer à l'oiseau répété, doublure et gardes de soie rose, tranches dorées (Reliure de l'époque). Minimes frottements à la reliure. Tome II des Oeuvres de Dorat, comprenant Réflexions sur le poème érotique, Les Tourterelles de Zelmis, Epître à Catherine II, Le Pot-pourri, Le Malheur... illustré de 4 gravures d'après Eisen par Longueil et Le Mire, 3 vignettes et 3 culs-de-lampe par les mêmes artistes. On a relié dans l'exemplaire le titre-frontispice de l'édition originale de 1766. Cette jolie reliure dorée d'une dentelle à l'oiseau, doit être attribuée à Derome, qui relia ainsi de nombreux exemplaires de cette édition. |
| It was amazing to see how close the Dorat spine details matched the 156a23, too close for this not to be the same binder, but who was he? I thought I recognized some imprints on the Dorat but first I wanted to see if that was really Derome's fer à l'oiseau, only a few weeks ago i was doing a page on this (see Comparative Diagram 8 on this page) |
| Because nearly all of the Dorat imprints are over charged with gold it is difficult to decide if the Dorat fer à l'oiseau imprint is the same as Derome's, its a close call, certainly they are absolutely similar and there is a strong posibility that the binder of the Dorat was using Derome's tool. |
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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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