| In their small book entitled Reliures françaises du XVIIe siècle, Isabelle de Conihout & Pascal Ract-Madoux, Paris, 2002. devoted a chapter to the works of Boyet. This was the first professional attempt to display and describe a wide range of bookbindings by Luc-Antoine Boyet. It is an invaluable reference and a must for anyone like myself who is a huge fan of his work. In the back pages of this book the authors include a limited inventory of rubbings taken from the imprints of the tools commonly used by Boyet. Below in Comparative Diagram 2, I show yet another imprint from our 1696 dentelle, compared to rubbing "a" shown on their page entitled Fers du doreur de Boyet. A close study of the 1696 dentelle indicates that "a" is in fact larger than the authors assumed. |
| While I was searching the dentelles for a good representative example of this imprint, I noticed, a strange flaw was present on all examples, I marked them all with an "x" that you will see if you click on the dentelle strip enlargement shown in Comparative Diagram 2. This flaw is then shown in the 2400 dpi enlargement. This is not the usual kind of flaw where the tool has been damaged or made irregularly. It shows up as a black spot as though the leather was burned, although I doubt that was actually the case. I then started looking closely at the other examples of this imprint presented by Isabelle de Conihout & Pascal Ract-Madoux, Paris, 2002. |
| Above I show their example # 34, in the text they tell us that another example of this type of decoration by Boyet, is found in the British Library (shown below shelfmark Davis512) and further down on the page they state that their fer a is a copy of a 17th century tool (I wish they would have shown it). |
| In Comparative Diagram 3, we see the Conihout example 34 fer a compared to our lab-a 1696 Breviary example. Below in Comparative Diagram 4, we see the British Library example Davis512. |
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In Comparative Diagram 5, I show the example #36 (Goulart) mentioned in the text of item 34. In all these examples we see that the Conihout fer a is actually more elaborate than her type model rubbing. We do not clearly see the flaw that I have pointed out earlier, in any other examples, which might suggest that our 1696 example is actually of a later execution i.e. post 1700, this could also be suggested by the usage of the sunflower in the spine compartments with a date of 1705. On the next page we are going to start looking at the spine compartments, particularly the central fleuron that I am calling the antipod. |
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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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